Reem Banna performing at Nakba Day observance in Al Ma'asara The village of Al Ma’asara, near Bethlehem, held a Palestinian cultural festival on Friday to mark the 62nd anniversary of the Nakba. Palestinian music, dance and poetry were all on display, offering a timely reminder of Palestine’s ancient history and vibrant culture. Above all, the event was an assertion of Palestinian identity, and of the right of Palestinians to live as free citizens in their homeland.
The festival was opened with a series of speeches from representatives of Al Ma’asara and other villages in the Bethlehem region, and from Siham Barghouti, the Palestinian Minister of Culture. There was then a performance from the renowned Palestinian singer Reem Banna, who sang several songs to great acclaim from the crowd of perhaps 200 people.
Three tents erected alongside of the festival represented the villages destroyed and the people displaced in 1948, and again in 1967. After 62 years, despite ever increasing oppression and persecution, a huge rise in illegal Israeli settlements, the construction of the apartheid wall, and much more, Palestinians remain steadfast. They have not and will not abandon their homeland, and they will not forget the unique and special culture that they are rightly so proud of. This festival was a timely reminder of this.
Bil’in
The weekly demonstration against the apartheid wall in Bil’in also commemorated the 62nd anniversary of the Nakba, where 700,000 Palestinians were forced to flee their home and were made refugees. The demonstration was fronted by a huge wooden key, representing the non-negotiable demand for the right of return for refugees. There were also three men dressed as Handala, the popular cartoon character symbolising the children of the subsequent refugee camps. As the demonstration reached the wall it was met with huge amounts of tear gas and before long the army attempted to enter the village and one Palestinian journalist was arrested. However, the demonstration suddenly changed its focus as the hot tear gas canisters created several small fires which spread quickly across the land and amongst the olive trees. The demonstrators spent about half an hour trying to extinguish the fire with olive branches until a Palestinian fire engine turned up and the demo ended.
Hebron (al Khalil)
Demonstrators painted messages onto the miitary watchtower next to Shuhada StreetThe city of Hebron held a demonstration today to mark the 62nd anniversary of the Nakba. The fourth of the now weekly demonstrations organized by Youth Against Settlements, protesters marched through Hebron to the heart of the Old City, led by the Scouts’ marching drumming band. Participants carried flags, banners and 62 balloons – one for each year of the Israeli occupation. The demonstration reached one of the military bases which blocks access for Palestinians to Shuhada Street, a key thoroughfare in Hebron which only Israelis or foreigners are now allowed to pass along. During the demonstration, ‘Open Shuhada Street’ and ‘This Is Apartheid’ were painted upon the soldiers’ watchtower, which led to the arrest of one Palestinian man.
After an hour of speeches, chants and songs by the military base, the demonstration moved away, along a road that runs parallel to Shuhada Street. Settlers above, who were surrounded by soldiers and police at the time, threw rocks down onto the march. Fortunately, no-one was hurt. Some Palestinian children threw some of the rocks back, for which the soldiers attempted, unsuccessfully, to arrest them. Settlers then poured dirty water and spat upon the demonstrators as they walked along the road beneath 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.
Sheikh Jarrah
Around 50 people gathered Saturday to march from the American Embassy along Nablus Road to Sheikh Jarrah where police and soldiers had blocked off the street into the neighborhood, only letting settlers through. After a long speech the demonstration began to dissipate. A group of settlers held up an Israeli flag and a woman from the neighborhood proudly approached them with her daughter waving a Palestinian flag. The crowd followed with chants.
Demonstrators begin marching in An Nabi SalehThis past Friday, May 14, the town of An Nabi Saleh held its weekly demonstration. Overly aggressive Israeli military tactics started a colossal brushfire, which reaped viable farmland. The weekly demonstration confronts the illegal expansion of Halamish settlement onto village land. Great local support brought out over 100 Palestinians, Israelis and Internationals.
The overwhelming drive and enthusiasm for justice rang through megaphones as chants and arms raised in pride as the demonstration moved down the valley. Israeli soldiers began to move forward from highway 465, and the peaceful demonstration soon got pushed back into the village as the Israeli military surrounded it on three sides. The use of excessive amounts of tear gas, percussion grenades, and rubber-coated steel bullets pushed villagers into a dangerously blind situation. Tear gas fired illegally from An Nabi Saleh’s hilltop ridge downhill was aimed directly at village demonstrators. Small brush fires started by tear gas canisters were fanned by the wind and engulfed the land in a massive brushfire.
As villagers retreated, soldiers chased demonstrators with tied attack dogs. Nobody was caught or injured from this unusually violent tactic. Tear gas rained down into the narrow streets of An Nabi Saleh, smoking out residents, causing great amounts of gas inhalation and setting fire to the private plots of local land owners. After many hours of holding back the Israeli military from invading the village, burnt fields smoldered and soldiers retreated while villagers dispersed with heads held high.
Tear gas canisters caused extensive brushfires in An Nabi SalehTwo Israeli activists were detained during the demonstration, one of whom was dragged down the road and then beaten in the police car while in custody.
The hilltop village of An Nabi Saleh has a population of approximately 500 residents and is located 30 kilometers northeast of Ramallah along highway 465. Today and every Friday since January 2010, around 100 un-armed demonstrators leave the village center in an attempt to reach a spring which borders land confiscated by Israeli settlers. The District Coordination Office has confirmed the spring is on Palestinian land, but nearly a kilometer before reaching the spring, the demonstration is routinely met with dozens of soldiers armed with M16 assault rifles, tear gas, rubber-coated steel bullets and percussion grenades.
The demonstrations protest Israel’s apartheid, which has manifested itself in An Nabi Saleh through land confiscation. The illegal Halamish (Neve Zuf) settlement, located opposite An Nabi Saleh, has illegally seized nearly of half of the village’s valuable agricultural land. In January 2010, hundreds of the village residents’ olive trees were uprooted by settlers. Conflict between the settlement and villagers reawakened due to the settlers’ attempt to re-annex An Nabi Saleh land despite an Israeli court decision in December 2009 that awarded the property rights of the land to An Nabi Saleh residents. The confiscated land of An Nabi Saleh is located on the Hallamish side of Highway 465 and is just one of many expansions of the illegal settlement since its establishment in 1977.
Aysar Yasser alZaben, 16 years old, was shot in his back yesterday evening in his family’s lands in Mazra’a alSharqia, east of Ramallah, apparently by a settler.
Aysar alZaben’s body was found in his plot by family members only hours after he was shot. He was found lying dead on the ground, face down, with a bullet hole in his back after being missing since the evening.
According to initial information, alZaben was shot by a settler when tending in his lands between 4:30 and 6:00 pm. At the time, a group of youth from the village scuffled with a settler near the adjacent Route 60. According to the testimonies of some of these youth, they were throwing stones towards Route 60, near a roadblock preventing Palestinian access to the road. At some point, a settler stopped his car and exited it, beginning to shoot live ammunition towards them, which caused them to run away back to the village. Escaping the shots, they were not aware that alZaben, who wasn’t with them and did not participate in the stone throwing, was hit.
As hours passed and alZaben did not return home, his family began looking for him. Having heard the shots earlier in the day, they began calling the Israeli Army, police and Civil Administration trying to locate him, thinking he may have been detained. Eventually, they set out to look for him in their fields, where they knew he had worked in the afternoon. According to his uncle, his lifeless body was found lying face down on the ground with a bullet hole in his back.
Mazra’a alSharqia is an agrarian village of about 5,000, located 15 kilometers Northeast of Ramallah. Despite the village’s location next to Route 60, which runs across the West Bank from north to south and was, in part, built on the Mazra’a’s lands, residents have no access to the road, as all the paths leading to and from it have been blocked by Israel.
After being disconnected from Route 60 in recent years, the only road from the area’s villages to Ramallah is a dangerous old agrarian road, which due to the mountainous terrain is often flooded in winters, completely disconnecting the region from the rest of the world.
Last Tuesday, a group of settlers from a nearby settlement have amassed in the Mazra’a alSharqia’s lands and attempted to enter the village after the Israeli government announced it will demolish illegal houses in a number of West Bank Jewish-only settlements. Residents, who suspected the settlers intend on holding a “price-tag” action in the village, confronted them, and manged to ward off the invasion.
They were then attacked by a force of soldiers who shot dozens of rounds of live ammunition and eventually also invaded the village.
Settlers, Palestinians in the street of Sheikh Jarrah
Hundreds of settlers held disruptive celebrations in the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah yesterday in honor of “Jerusalem Day”. Dancing, screaming and praying in the street, the settlers disrupted life for over six hours, as police barricades and teeming masses prevented traffic from flowing as usual. One Palestinian woman was violently assaulted in the afternoon, resulting in a gash across her face and a broken nose. Palestinian residents observing from their homes and/or sidewalk were subjected to the extremely racist harassment which is consistent with any settler activity.
Palestinians, Israelis and internationals staging a small counter-demonstration were forced by police out of the street and onto the sidewalk. This restriction on freedom of speech came shortly after massive crowds of settlers effectively closed the street for hours, filling multiple blocks with police-facilitated nationalist celebrations of ethnic cleansing. Four Israeli activists were arrested after a small counter-demonstration held at the entrance to Sheikh Jarrah.
Palestinian women protest racist "Jerusalem Day" outside of occupied Gawi house
“Jerusalem Day” according to the Hebrew calendar, falls 2-3 weeks after the end of the war of 1967 when Jerusalem was “unified”. In reality, this holiday observes the beginning of a systematic ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian would-be capital, East Jerusalem. “Jerusalem Day” is observed with a march through West Jerusalem and the Old City, particularly the Muslim Quarter. In the past few years, the march has taken a very extreme nationalist character, and extreme right messages are celebrated. Last year, there were violent clashes when marchers attacked Palestinians while marching though the Old City and attacked Israeli leftist protestors who held a quiet demonstration near the march.
Contextual background on Sheikh Jarrah
Approximately 475 Palestinian residents living in the Karm Al-Ja’ouni neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, located directly north of the Old City, face imminent eviction from their homes. All 28 families are refugees from 1948, primarily from West Jerusalem and Haifa, whose houses in Sheikh Jarrah were built and given to them through a joint project between the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and the Jordanian government in 1956.
Facing systematic ethnic cleansing through the Israeli judicial system, all 28 families of the neighborhood ultimately await eviction. The violent eviction of theKamel al-Kurd family, by Israeli police and settlers in November of 2008, resulted in the death of ailing Abu Kamel (Mohammad) al Kurd, 61. The August 2009 evictions of the Gawi and Hannoun extended families and December 2009 occupation of Rifqa al Kurd’s front addition followed, beginning a visible trend of ethnic cleansing in Sheikh Jarrah. Over 60 residents, including 20 children, have now been displaced.
The evicted families established protest tents near their homes, many of which were repeatedly demolished by the Jerusalem Municipality. As a result, only the Rifqa al Kurd tent remains standing. Members of the Gawi, Hannoun and Kamel al Kurd families continue a daily presence outside of the occupied Gawi home. The Palestinians and their international and Israeli supporters face continual harassment from Israeli settlers. Police presence in the community is almost entirely directed at prosecuting Palestinians, and not in neutrally protecting residents from harassment and violence.
Constructing new Jewish settlements and/or occupying Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank is illegal under many international laws, including Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The plight of the Gawi, al-Kurd and Hannoun families is just a small part of Israel’s ongoing campaign of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from East Jerusalem, the capital of a hypothetical independent state.
Legal Background
The eviction orders, issued by Israeli courts, are a result of claims made in 1967 by the Sephardic Community Committee and the Knesseth Yisrael Association (who since sold their claim to the area to Nahalat Shimon) – settler organizations whose aim is to take over the whole area using falsified deeds for the land dating back to 1875. In 1972, these two settler organizations applied to have the land registered in their names with the Israel Lands Administration (ILA). Their claim to ownership was noted in the Land Registry; however, it was never made into an official registry of title. The first Palestinian property in the area was taken over at this time.
The case continued in the courts for another 37 years. Amongst other developments, the first lawyer of the Palestinian residents reached an agreement with the settler organizations in 1982 (without the knowledge or consent of the Palestinian families) in which he recognized the settlers’ ownership in return for granting the families the legal status of protected tenants. This affected 23 families and served as a basis for future court and eviction orders (including theal -Kurd family house take-over in December 2009), despite the immediate appeal filed by the families’ new lawyer. Furthermore, a Palestinian landowner, Suleiman Darwish Hijazi , has legally challenged the settlers’ claims. In 1994 he presented documents certifying his ownership of the land to the courts, including tax receipts from 1927. In addition, the new lawyer of the Palestinian residents located a document, proving the land inSheikh Jarrah had never been under Jewish ownership. The Israeli courts rejected these documents.
The first eviction orders were issued in 1999 based on the (still disputed) agreement from 1982 and, as a result, two Palestinian families (Hannoun and Gawi) were evicted in February 2002. After the 2006 Israeli Supreme Court finding that the settler committees’ ownership of the lands was uncertain, and the Lands Settlement officer of the court requesting that the ILA remove their names from the Lands Registrar, the Palestinian families returned back to their homes. The courts, however, failed to recognize new evidence presented to them and continued to issue eviction orders based on decisions from 1982 and 1999 respectively. Further evictions followed in November 2008 (Kamel al-Kurd family) and August 2009 (Hannoun and Gawi families for the second time). An uninhabited section of a house belonging to the al-Kurd family was taken over by settlers on 1 December 2009.
The ultimate aim of the Zionist organizations is to convert Sheikh Jarrah into a new Jewish settlement and to create a Jewish continuum that will effectively cut off the Old City from the northern Palestinian neighborhoods. On 28 August 2008,Nahalat Shimon International filed a plan to build a series of five and six-story apartment blocks – Town Plan Scheme (TPS) 12705 – in the Jerusalem Local Planning Commission. If TPS 12705 comes to pass, the existing Palestinian houses in this key area would be demolished, about 500 Palestinians would be evicted, and 200 new settler units would be built for a new settlement: Shimon HaTzadik
Aysar Yasser alZaben, 16 years old, was shot in his back yesterday evening in his family’s lands in Mazra’a alSharqia, east of Ramallah, apparently by a settler.
Aysar alZaben’s body was found in his plot by family members only hours after he was shot. He was found lying dead on the ground, face down, with a bullet hole in his back after being missing since the evening.
According to initial information, alZaben was shot by a settler when tending in his lands between 4:30 and 6:00 pm. At the time, a group of youth from the village scuffled with a settler near the adjacent Route 60. According to the testimonies of some of these youth, they were throwing stones towards Route 60, near a roadblock preventing Palestinian access to the road. At some point, a settler stopped his car and exited it, beginning to shoot live ammunition towards them, which caused them to run away back to the village. Escaping the shots, they were not aware that alZaben, who wasn’t with them and did not participate in the stone throwing, was hit.
As hours passed and alZaben did not return home, his family began looking for him. Having heard the shots earlier in the day, they began calling the Israeli Army, police and Civil Administration trying to locate him, thinking he may have been detained. Eventually, they set out to look for him in their fields, where they knew he had worked in the afternoon. According to his uncle, his lifeless body was found lying face down on the ground with a bullet hole in his back.
Mazra’a alSharqia is an agrarian village of about 5,000, located 15 kilometers Northeast of Ramallah. Despite the village’s location next to Route 60, which runs across the West Bank from north to south and was, in part, built on the Mazra’a’s lands, residents have no access to the road, as all the paths leading to and from it have been blocked by Israel.
After being disconnected from Route 60 in recent years, the only road from the area’s villages to Ramallah is a dangerous old agrarian road, which due to the mountainous terrain is often flooded in winters, completely disconnecting the region from the rest of the world.
Last Tuesday, a group of settlers from a nearby settlement have amassed in the Mazra’a alSharqia’s lands and attempted to enter the village after the Israeli government announced it will demolish illegal houses in a number of West Bank Jewish-only settlements. Residents, who suspected the settlers intend on holding a “price-tag” action in the village, confronted them, and manged to ward off the invasion.
They were then attacked by a force of soldiers who shot dozens of rounds of live ammunition and eventually also invaded the village.
