Tag: Settlement

CPT: Hebron Incidents, December 17-31, 2009

The Christian Peacemaker Team in Hebron released this incident report for the period between December 17 and December 31, 2009.

December 17, 2009
Shortly after morning worship, the team’s neighbor told them that soldiers were on the roof of the apartment building. When Herbert, Schroeder, and Shiffer filmed them and asked why they kept coming up to the roof, they did not respond. Kern brought up tea and cookies, but none of the soldiers accepted this hospitality.

The team decided next time the soldiers came up to the roof again, they would videotape themselves singing “Joy to the World” there for a digital Christmas greeting. When soldiers did not subsequently appear, the team decided to record a digital greeting anyway.

December 18, 2009
After consulting with their neighbor, team members decided to keep the stairwell door locked through the morning in case the soldiers arrived again. A lawyer from the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) told the team that legally, the soldiers have no right to enter the house without a warrant.

December 19, 2009
In the afternoon, Schroeder, Kern, Shiffer and a member of EAPPI went to al-Bweireh with Hani Abu Haikel, a member of the team’s advisory committee. They continued to interview families regarding the affect of the Hill 18 (26) settler outpost on the neighbourhood students returning from school. One mother said that the thing she would like most to change is the opening of the main road into al-Bweireh, currently blocked in three locations. She also said that international accompaniment of children walking home will help bring peace of mind.

December 20, 2009
Shiffer and Schroeder went to al-Bweireh to accompany the children coming from school. Boys from the Za’atari family told Shiffer and Schroeder that on 17 December settlers had attacked them. The youngest boy had visible scrapes on his face and hand.

December 21, 2009
Schroeder and Funk monitored school patrol from outside and inside the Ibrahimi Mosque Checkpoint. At 7:25 a.m., and Israeli policeman approached Funk and asked, “What are you doing here?”

“Keeping an eye on school children on their way to school.”

“You have no right to stand there, only TIPH can legally stand there.”

“We have been here for years and it has never been a problem.”

“You have no right to be watching soldiers.”

“We do not interfere with the soldiers. We were invited to be here by the municipality.”

“You have no right to be here.”

“I believe we do, but I will respect your wishes today.”

“Bring a paper next time to show you have the right to be here.”

In the afternoon, Kern, Herbert, and Schroeder went to al-Bweireh to accompany the children and to interview the mother of a child who had been attacked by the settlers the previous week on Wednesday. A member of the team’s Advisory Committee drove the team there and translated for them. From the interview they learned the following:

The seven-year-old was with a brother and cousin when the settlers attacked. As they ran toward a nearby house, he tripped and fell, which caused the wound on his face and hand. His brother ran back to pick him up and carry him to safety. The injured boy is especially afraid of settlers, so much so that he sits beside his brother in 7th grade for an hour-and-a-half after his own school dismisses, rather than walk home without him. A settler on horseback tried to snatch up his younger sister a few weeks ago, and the house is attacked two to three times a week. The settlers who chased the boys on 17 December could have been anywhere from sixteen to twenty years old. They had a dog with them. The police refused to allow Mr. Za’atari make the complaint the next day without the seven-year-old present and then asked the boy, when he arrived, if he had taken pictures of the settlers.

December 22, 2009
Schroeder and Funk visited Tel Rumeida this morning. While they were at Hani and Reema Abu Haikel’s house, Reema stood watch by the doorway in case settlers or soldiers caused trouble for men they had hired to prune grapes and do other yard work. After about ten minutes, Reema alerted Funk and Schroeder that soldiers were in the yard and had ordered the workers to go home. When asked why, the lead soldier said: “This is neither Arab or Jewish land. When people clean the land, the next thing is they begin to build for the land in question.” The Abu Haikels hold clear legal title to the land from the time of the Ottoman Empire.

December 24, 2009
During morning school patrol, team members received Christmas greetings from a number of Palestinians who passed them while they were monitoring checkpoints. After the patrol, the team packed up special foods they had prepared and traveled to At-Tuwani to celebrate Christmas with CPTers there. The taxi driver who drove them back to Hebron from At-Tuwani, in honor of the holiday, tuned to a radio station that played only “Jingle Bells” over and over.

December 25, 2009
The team went to St. Catherine’s Church in Bethlehem for the Christmas morning service. People from six different continents were worshipping there. One of the priests had the task of preventing photojournalists from trampling the worshipers.

December 26, 2009
At about 12:00 p.m., the team heard soldiers walking up to CPT’s apartment roof. Herbert and Shiffer asked the unit commander for a warrant, his name, and the name of the individual who ordered the roof occupation. The commander failed to show a warrant or offer the necessary information. Two members of TIPH International arrived ten minutes later, and within a few minutes of their arrival, the soldiers left the roof.

Kern, Schroeder, and Hani Abu Haikel went out to visit al-Bweireh families. At the entrance to the neighborhood, a man said settlers had been stoning houses at 2:00 a.m. Friday morning. One house that received the worst stoning belonged to a family whom the team had known in 1995-96 and who had since moved to Jerusalem. A neighbor called the police in Kiryat Arba, who did not come. Then he called the owner in Jerusalem, who called the police in Jerusalem, who called the police in Kiryat Arba and told them to come to the house.

At a house directly across from the Givat Ha Harsina settlement house, a woman told them that settlers threw stones daily and about twice a week at night–usually after midnight. The children in the household are not allowed to play in the yard, because of the constant stoning.

She said they leave the gate open so that children coming home from school can run to safety in their yard when the settlers start stoning them, but that settlers then stone their house even more.

In the taxi on way home, a man had several sacks of firewood. Abu Haikel said wood fires are called called “the fruit of winter” in Arabic.

December 27, 2009
At al-Bweireh, Herbert videotaped a brief interaction between a settler boy and older male settlers. During their discussion they passed a knife back and forth.

In the evening, the team got a call from their neighbor, saying that she had heard shots fired and heard that settlers had beaten someone at the Qitoun checkpoint. [See the 5 January 2009 release here.]

December 28, 2009
Kern and Funk went out for school patrol in al-Bweireh a little later in the afternoon than usual. (The team had decided to stagger the times they went out to the neighborhood so that settlers would not anticipate their presence.) At the top of the road that descends into al-Bweireh, they saw three of the older girls running toward their home in the distance and then spotted a settler who was the cause of their flight. They learned that earlier in the day, a settler had chased one of the boys, who fell off a stone wall trying to escape, and then aimed a pistol at the boy.

Later in the afternoon, while Kern was checking in with Hani Abu Haikel, he said in an urgent manner that he had to go because he heard yelling at the checkpoint. Herbert, Shiffer, and Schroeder rushed to the scene, and found Abu Haikel, who said that soldiers had stopped his cousin and told him to stand up against the wall. Abu Haikel told them the soldiers had been targeting his family. On another night, the Abu Haikel family had a party and the military arrested several people who attended and sent his uncle to the police station where he was detained for several days.

December 31, 2009
Around 9:00 a.m., a local human rights activist called to report that the Israeli military was demolishing buildings in al-Bweireh. Kern and an EAPPI arrived in time to document the military loading a small Bobcat bulldozer onto a truck after demolishing a barn, dovecote and garage (See the 13 January CPTnet release here.)

The Christian Peacemaker Team is an ecumenical initiative to support violence reduction efforts around the world. To learn more about CPT’s peacemaking work, visit cpt.org

An Nabi Salih: Resistance to settlement expansion met with military violence

15 January 2009

A protester is hit by Israeli Occupation Forces soldier during a demonstration in An Nabi Salih.
A protester is hit by Israeli Occupation Forces soldier during a demonstration in An Nabi Salih.

Israeli forces must have anticipated the large response to the An Nabi Salih Popular Struggle’s call out for international solidarity in their 4th consecutive Friday demonstration on January 15th. Three International Solidarity Movement (ISM) activists were turned away from the seldom-staffed partial checkpoint of ‘Atara, between Ramallah and An Nabi Salih. Fortunately, a back route was established and the group made it to the village, joining 10 other internationals, a dozen journalists and over 300 Palestinians.

The hilltop village of An Nabi Salih has a population of approximately 500 residents and is located 30 kilometers northeast of Ramallah along highway 465. The demonstration protested the illegal seizure of valuable agricultural land and the January 9th 2010 uprooting of hundreds of the village resident’s olive trees by the Hallamish (Neve Zuf) settlement located on highway 465, opposite An Nabi Salih. Conflict between the settlement and villagers reawakened in the past month due to the settler’s attempt to re-annex An Nabi Salih land despite the December 2009 Israeli court case that ruled the property rights of the land to the An Nabi Salih residents. The confiscated land of An Nabi Salih is located on the Hallamish side of highway 465 and is just unfortunately one of many expansions of the settlement since it’s establishment in 1977.

The plan for the demonstration was to march from the hilltop village and down to the seized fields in an attempt to reach the land. Less than one kilometer into the march, demonstrators met military jeeps, Israeli soldiers and unsparing amounts of tear gas blocking the road. Occupation resisters successfully forced the military to retreat a few hundred meters and an avenue to continue the march towards the fields through a valley between the road an the An Nabi Salih village was created. Military forces defended the settler-confiscated lands from multiple points including the road leading up to the village, highway 465 and a hilltop in An Nabi Salih using tear gas, sound bombs, rubber coated bullets and live ammunition.

Major struggles to reach the land occurred in the valley and on the lower portion of the access road to An Nabi Salih with sporadic outbreaks of force throughout the area. By 4pm, soldiers were forced into retreat to the base of the road (tear gas canisters rained intermittently until dusk) and a deal was made between the Popular Committee and the military for the release of the seven Palestinians arrested during the demonstration, three of which were woman arrested at the demonstration’s inception. Accounts of military violence during their detention at the Hallamish settlement were reported by multiple arrestees. One Palestinian resister was severely wounded by a tear gas canister resulting in a large gash in his head  requiring emergency evacuation and medical attention by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.

Seven International Solidarity Movement volunteers participated in the demonstration by shooting video, taking photos, offering medical aid and witnessing front-line violence and arrests.

Female students of Madama school subject to constant harassment from Israeli army

12 January 2010

Israeli Occupation Forces entered the northern West Bank village of Madama last night, damaging 5 houses and terrifying residents. The military has upped their presence in Madama in recent weeks, with the harassment of female students on their way to school becoming commonplace, and the creation of a new roadblock separating hundreds of farmers from their land.

Approximately 20 soldiers entered the village late last night in military jeeps, the explosion of sound bombs announcing their arrival. The Israeli Occupation Forces remained in the village for approximately 2 hours. The exterior of 5 Madama homes were damaged during the incursion.

The Israeli army is a regular presence in the village. The girls school as become a frequent target for military harassment and intimidation, situated on the northern edge of the village and a mere 100 metres from the Israeli-only road that runs east to Yitzhar settlement. Military jeeps patrol the road, often slowing down or stopping to harass the school’s 338 students, aged from 6 to 18 years, during their breaktimes.

Curfews and flying checkpoints are also regularly established on the edge of, or inside the village, disrupting the girls’ access to school in the morning. Harrasment has increased particularly over the last two weeks, during the already stressful period of exams. Pupils now leave very promptly at the end of school, often met by parents.

Last month the Israeli army erected a giant earth mound across a crucial agricultural road that passes under the settler road and situated next to the school. The road block severely limits hundreds of farmers’ access to their lands, making transport by vehicle all but impossible dealing a severe – and intentional – blow to the village’s chief economy.

Madama’s economy has suffered greatly as a result. In addition to the creeping strangulation of the village’s agricultural livelihood, the Zone C boundary circulating the village prevents both residential building expansion and development work on the village football ground and new work in the stone quarries.

The formation of Yizthar settlement to the south of Madama in 1982 constituted the theft of over 1000 dunams (1 dunam=0.1 hectare) of vital land from Madama farmers, in addition to annexation of land from the neighbouring villages of Burin, Asira al-Qabliya, Urif, Einabus and Huwara. The entirety of Madama’s water wells are situated on the 1000 dunums, forcing the villages’ 1,800 residents to purchase their water supply from outside sources, a 90 litre tank costing an average of 120 NIS.

Madama’s location in a precarious Zone B/Zone C corridor has had a detrimental effect on all aspects of life in the village, as residents can only watch as wanton military harassment surges and creeping annexation of land gradually limits their freedom. The settlement of Qedumim stretches out to the west, Yitzhar to the south, Bracha to the north east and Itamar to the east. The erection of a new military watchtower to the village’s north, and restriction from Palestinians entering the surrounding area, may herald the development of yet another new settlement outpost.

Israeli forces demolish 17 buildings in northern West Bank

10 January 2010

Israeli military forces have demolished 17 buildings in the Palestinian community of Khirbet Tana for the second time. This is the only the most recent chapter in a long struggle for the small agricultural community to keep their lands.

The Israeli army arrived this morning to the village in a convoy of jeeps and bulldozers and razed 17 buildings to the ground. The demolished structures included family homes, children’s classrooms and shelters for the village’s livestock. Several olive trees were also razed to the ground. In a statement issued by the Israeli military, the buildings were had demolished due to the fact they were “illegally constructed structures” built on a military training ground, “endangering the lives of those present”.

Khirbet Tana centered around two natural springs, lying 7km east of Beit Furik in the Nablus area of the West Bank. It is currently home to approximately 35 families, some of whom reside there permanently, and some who stay only during the spring and winter seasons due to the regions’ remoteness and harsh climates. Residents say that references to the villages existence date back to over 3500 years ago.

This is not the first time that this has happened. In 2005 Israeli forces demolished almost the entire village, leaving only the mosque, built over 150 years previously. Despite the majority of the dwellings having been built several hundred years ago, the military claimed they had been built without permission and thus had the right to demolish. The entire area was categorised as Area C – under full Israeli military and civilian control – in the Oslo Accords of 1994.

Residents also suffer from the ongoing threat from settlers from the nearby settlement of Mekhora, built on the lands of Khirbet Tana and Beit Furik. The settlers are ultimately those who benefit from the destruction of Khirbet Tana, as their agricultural projects continue to expand on to village land. On at least one occasion settlers have been sighted swimming in Khirbet Tana’s source of drinking water, a common method employed by settlers to pollute the water of Palestinian villages.

Two months ago Israeli forces confiscated four tractors from Khirbet Tana farmers, demanding 3100 NIS for the return of each. The farmers were then summoned to appear in court in Ariel settlement to ask for the return of the machinery.

Despite these hardships the villagers remain defiant, immediately starting to clear rubble and begin the rebuilding. Plans for a demonstration in Beit Furik are also underway.

Illegal settlers and Israeli military attack Palestinian non-violent demonstration against settlement expansion

International Women’s Peace Service

8 January 2010

On January 8, villagers from the Palestinian village of An Nabi Saleh (population approx 500), located in the north of the Ramallah district, held its third demonstration in three weeks against creeping settlement expansion and land confiscation by the illegal Israeli settlement of Hallamish (also known as Neve Tzuf). According to the residents of the village, since the settlement was established illegally on land belonging to An Nabi Saleh in 1977, there have been repeated attempts to expand the settlement. In 2009, the village successfully challenged, in the Israeli courts, the expansion of the settlement fence to land immediately alongside settler highway 465. In the past month, however, illegal settlers residing in Hallamish colony have attempted to re-annex the land alongside the highway, which now divides An Nabi Saleh’s land. In this period, the settlers have proceeded to build a shelter structure for the purpose of a memorial, on the land, which includes a fresh water spring used by An Nabi Saleh farmers and shepherds.

In response to the attempts by the Hallamish settlers to re-annex the land, An Nabi Saleh residents commenced non-violent demonstrations and actions to oppose the settlement expansion in December 2009. Prior to the demonstration on 8th of January, actions were also held on 1 January 2010 and 26 December 2009. These demonstrations included the replanting of olive trees in the area annexed by the illegal settlers.

Around 120 residents of An Nabi Saleh were joined by Israeli anti-occupation activists and internationals from the International Women’s Peace Service and the International Solidarity Movement in a non-violent demonstration, marching to the land which the Hallamish settlers have attempted to re-annex. During the course of the demonstration, the residents of An Nabi Saleh successfully blockaded 465, the illegal settler highway, for more than two hours. Mid-demonstration, one section of the non-violent demonstration also broke off from the highway and successful reached the land re-annexed by Hallamish, tearing down the illegally built settler structure.

Both sections of the non-violent demonstration, however, were met with force by the Israeli military who deployed more than 17 jeeps and at least two dozen soldiers to the area. During the course of the two hour demonstration, the Israeli military proceeded to fire up to 100 tear-gas canisters, as well as firing rubber-coated steel bullets and live ammunition at the un-armed demonstrators. More than 20 residents of the village were injured as a result, including three who were hospitalized. Those hospitalized, included two people injured by rubber bullets, and one teenage boy who received a head injury when he was struck in the head with a tear gas canister.

Many of the non-violent demonstrators were also injured by rocks which were thrown by illegal settlers from Hallamish from the hillside below the settlement and above the demonstration. One IWPS volunteer narrowly missed being hit by one of the rocks thrown by the settlers.

Despite a large presence, the Israeli military did little to stop the illegal settlers’ violent attack on the unarmed Palestinian demonstration. In one instance, when the Israeli military did attempt to prevent the illegal settlers from descending the hill in order to reach the non-violent Palestinian demonstration, the illegal settlers also attacked the soldiers. For several hours after the conclusion of the non-violent Palestinian demonstration, settler youth repeatedly threw rocks at passing Palestinian vehicles on the road below Hallamish colony. On 9 January, the day after the non-violent demonstration, residents of An Nabi Saleh informed IWPS volunteers that more 100 olive trees had been cut down and burnt by the Hallamish settlers on the land that belongs to the village, which the settlers were trying to re-annex.