A member of the left-wing Knesset party visited Tel Rumeida settlement in Hebron Wednesday, generating a large crowd as walked through the city. He came to speak and was given a tour of the settlements. The group was surrounded by around 10 police, 40 border police, and also at least two vans of secret police (according to Palestinian bystanders these are the same group who shot dead several people on board the Gaza flotilla last month). There were also representatives of Breaking the Silence, and three or four coach-loads of Zionists following the press and party member into the Tel Rumeida settlement. The heavy police presence suggested concern that settlers would attack the visitors.
Local Palestinians and internationals waited at the bottom of the street as he entered the settlement as well as coaches and the soldiers stationed at the checkpoint there. When the tour/demonstration made their way back down the road towards the coaches, Zionists approached the internationals and began shouting at them. One man was accused of drinking Jewish blood because he was drinking a can of Arabic coke. The settlers shouted ‘This is not Palestine, it is not Arab land and you’d better get used to it!’.
One woman screamed into the face of an international that foreign money had gone to buy the Palestinians shopping malls and that Jews could not even build on a tiny scrap of land. The deluded and venomous nature of what they were saying, caused several internationals to break down in tears. The presence of the police and army to step in and defend the Israeli visitors, and their accommodating attitude towards the ‘peaceful protest’ was also a source of distress. Palestinians are accustomed to being shot at and tear gassed in response to their own peaceful demonstrations.
Hebron's Palestinian residents face more harassment and abuse from soldiers and settlers than in any other major West Bank cityTel Rumeida raid, 14 June
The Israeli army conducted a night raid the on the mosque Othman Ibn Afan in Tel Rumeida, Hebron, 14 June 2010. At 9.30 pm local residents and mosque visitors witnessed approximately 14 heavily armed soldiers waiting outside the mosque, ultimately for the purpose of detaining several men.
The men were taken individually to the other side of the street and were stripped of their belongings, photographed and identified. A group of international activists arrived around 11 pm, and shortly thereafter the soldiers packed up and left the mosque. According to local residents none of the detained men were arrested or hurt. The Israeli soldiers outside the mosque called the night venture “an intelligence operation”.
Crop destruction near Kiryat Arba Settlement in Hebron, 16 June
During the night, settlers raided and destroyed crops and water supply on the land of a family living in Jabal Jahwar near the Kiryat Arba Settlement in Hebron. The following morning, the family, upset by the damage to their land, detailed regular property destruction by the settlers. Offenses included ongoing harassment, destruction of plants and water supply for the crops, poisoning plants and trying to cut down olive trees.
At-Tuwani – On the morning of Saturday, 12th June 2010, shortly before 11.00, about thirty Israeli settlers from Havat Ma’on oupost, masked and armed with slings and sticks, invaded At-Tuwani village, attacking the most exposed house of the village and throwing stones against Palestinian villagers.
The settlers approached the house and soon damaged the low stone fence and broke the glass of a window using an iron stick. At the time of the attack, only women and children were at home because all the men of the family were going to the near city of Yatta for a relative’s funeral. The women with the children soon left the house, running away scared. While running, one of the women, age 19, pregnant and with a baby in her arms, fell to the ground. Later in the morning, she has been transferred by a Palestinian Red Cross ambulance to the near hospital of Yatta.
When Operation Dove volunteers reached the place, together with many Palestinian residents of the village, the settlers were moving away from the house, without stopping throwing stones with slings. Some Palestinians have been hit and afterwards treated by paramedical staff.
Israeli army, police and border police came about half an hour after the aggression began, when the settlers had already retired among the trees of Havat Ma’on. Shortly after the security forces had arrived, some settlers with uncovered face came out from the wood, provoking a lot of tension among the Palestinians. Some activists, belonging to the Israeli peace association Ta’ayush, who had arrived shortly before, interposed betweeen the Palestinians and the soldiers; one of them have been arrested.
In the meantime, some army vehicles blocked the main entrance to the village, in order to control the area. After the accident, the police collected testimonies from all the witnesses and took pictures to document the damage caused to the Palestinian property by the settlers aggression. Two Palestinian men who live in the house attacked by settlers went to Kiryat Arba police station to file a complaint. Two Operation Dove volunteers did the same in order to release their testimony about the events and deliver evidences (photos and videos).
Operation Dove have maintained an international presence in At-Tuwani and South Hebron Hills since 2004
Soldiers tried to force demonstrators back from a blocked entrance to Shuhada StreetPalestinian residents of Hebron gathered on Saturday, supported by a large group of Israeli activists, to protest against the continued restrictions on their freedom of movement within Hebron. This includes the total closure to Palestinians of Shuhada Street, a key thoroughfare on which all Palestinian shops and homes have been sealed shut.
Approximately 100 people joined the demonstration which gathered at a military barrier which blocks one of the entrances to Shuhada Street from the Old City. After an hour or so of speeches, chants and songs, and the distribution of numerous boycott ‘contracts’, which ask people to commit themselves to boycotting settlement products, the demonstrators marched through the Old City to a second blocked entrance, from which soldiers tried to force them back. The march continued, stopping at the Palestinian Authority Municipal Inspectors office, which the Israelis closed last week, in a direct contravention of the Oslo Accords (1994). As protesters moved through the Old City, settlers in the floors above poured water and threw eggs at them.
The settlements in Hebron are, like all settlements within the West Bank and East Jerusalem, illegal under international law. Palestinian residents of the Old City and the district of Tel Rumeida suffer severe restriction of movement, frequent harassment and occasional violence at the hands of both soldiers and settlers. Shuhada Street has been closed to Palestinians since 1994, forcing shops to close and residents to leave their homes.
ISM Journal: A visit to Hebron
Wadiya and FadehHebron, Al Khalil, is the largest city in the southern West Bank. While walking through the the Old City we were invited to pay a visit to the house of Fadeh, who lives with his young wife and baby in one of the ancient stone buildings overlooking the market. Although the few rooms are small and, to our eyes, cramped, they have a picturesque charm.
Fadeh’s problem is that his house is situated in an area of the city which Jewish settlers have, since 1967, progressively infiltrated. Called by them “Beit Hadassah”, the neighbourhood is now home to some of the most rabidly racist settlers in the West Bank. They occupy upper floor apartments from which they have forcibly expelled the Palestinian owners. From here they have been known to throw rubbish, rocks, urine and faeces down onto passers by.
Constant aggression and physical attacks are tactics employed by the settlers to force more Palestinians to leave the neighbourhood. Fadeh himself was shot four times during an invasion of his house. His nephew Wadiya (6) still bears the scar on his face of a recent rock attack. As a four-year-old he was abducted by settlers and was later found unconscious, with traces of a chlorine-like substance around his eyes.
Sometimes the settlers adopt less violent methods of persuasion. Fadeh has been offered in excess of AUD$1,000,000 for his modest house. This ties in with reports of other Palestinians being offered similar sums for their strategically-placed properties, together with the offer of resettlement in the United States. While this may seem far-fetched it is worthwhile remembering that a proportion of the settlement activity on the West Bank, and in particular in Hebron, is financed by American Jewish billionaires sympathetic to the Zionist enterprise.
Complaining to the Israeli police, who have jurisdiction in this part of the city, is useless. When he complained about the storefronts which had been welded shut, Fadeh was told by a captain of police, “This area will remain closed until the death of the Palestinian state”. Such is life in Occupied Hebron.
Souad has lost access to the land that provides her livelihoodSouad lives in the beautiful village of Safa, south west of Bethlehem, close by the path of the apartheid wall. From her house in the village it is only a short walk to her land – an entire, rolling hillside, the summit of which has been stolen by the Israeli colony/settlement of Bat Eyn. No fence separates her fields and terraces from the settlement: Bat Ayn is one of only two colonies without such a fence in the entire West Bank, designed to make it easier, without a defining border, to make future land grabs.
The title deeds to Souad’s hillside have been in her family for over 100 years. Not that it does her any good – she cannot even graze her sheep without risking being fired upon by the settlers. She can only watch from a nearby hill while her peaches and grapes, soon ready for harvest, wither and rot on the vines and trees, or are stolen by settlers. She needs to work the land, to ensure the proof of continuing ownership and to keep the soil in good condition, but fears for her life if she was to venture there. She has watched helplessly as hundreds of fruit trees, replanted with help from international donors after the original trees were torched by settlers, were dug up and taken back to the settlement to be planted there.
Our presence on this nearby hill was soon noticed by Israeli soldiers patrolling nearby roads and we decided to move back to the village, lest the soldiers enter and fire tear-gas into the village as punishment for the presence of international observers. As we left Souad ruefully remarked, “My hill is gone. Where we are standing may be next.”
It is difficult to see how villagers such as Souad can carry on. She may say, “With God’s help we will survive”, but, dependent wholly for her livelihood on what her land produces, her future is precarious in the extreme. From these hillsides it is possible, on a clear day, to see well beyond the Green Line and, they say, to Tel Aviv. Such a beautiful land. The Stolen Land. And the disappearing land.
