Mohammed Ibrahim Qaddous, 16, was shot dead with live ammunition when a Border Police force raided his village of Iraq Burin near Nablus to quash a demonstration this afternoon. Another 16 year old was shot in the head and critically injured.
Qaddous was shot at 3pm this afternoon in the aftermath of a demonstration in the village of Iraq Burin protesting restrictions on access to their lands beneath the Jewish-only settlement of Har Brakha. He was shot in the back, indicating he could not have been posing any threat to the soldiers who shot him. At the same time, Ussayed Jamal Abd elNasser, 16, was shot in the head with live ammunition and critically injured. They were both evacuated to a hospital in Nablus where Ussayed is currently being operated on.
The demonstrators set out towards the village’s lands after midday prayer, and were immediately confronted by soldiers who shot bursts of live ammunition in the air. They then continued to shoot tear-gas and rubber bullets towards the villagers in an attempt to prevent them from reaching their lands. Following the unprovoked attack on the villagers, who were accompanied by 15 international activists, intermittent clashes ensued.
After about two hours, the Army retreated towards the settlement and demonstrators went back to the village. Shortly after, armored Border Police jeeps invaded the village, arrested three people and raided houses. A few minutes later, live shots were fired at a small group of young men, some of which were throwing stones. The shots resulted in one fatality and one critical injury to the head.
UPDATE: Huwaida Arraf released on 20 March after being illegally under arrest for 31 hours. Eight of these hours were spent standing in the cold in the illegal Halamish settlement. During this time she witnessed the border police by whom she was detained abuse the two Palestinian men who were also illegally arrested, Omar, 23, and Amjad, 22. She was treated with vulgar verbal abuse. After refusing to stare at wall, the police became particular violent. They picked her up by her handcuffed arms and threw onto the pavement. She was brought to Ramle Prison and released without seeing a judge.
X-ray image of the large rubber bullet lodged into Ellen Stark's arm. 19 March 2010, An Nabi Saleh
Friday’s demonstration in An Nabi Saleh saw an increase in violence and collective punishment from the Israeli military, as twenty-five demonstrators were injured, windows of cars and homes were intentionally shattered, and three were arrested. ISM volunteer Ellen Stark was shot at point blank range (4 meters) with a rubber bullet as she stood with medics, Popular Committee members and other internationals. ISM co-founder Huwaida Arraf was arrested while negotiating with the IOF to allow Ellen through the military line to get to the hospital. According to Ellen, “we were standing on Palestinian land, in support of the village who’s land has been confiscated but we weren’t even demonstrating yet. We were standing with medics who were also shot with tear gas.”
Ellen’s had to undergo surgery to remove the bullet, which was lodged between her ulna and radius of her right arm. Her wrist is broken as a result of the bullet impact. As of 12:00 pm Saturday, Palestine time, Huwaida has yet to be located in the Israeli prison system.
Over an hour before the demonstration began, soldiers took position on a hilltop near the house of an An Nabi Saleh Popular Committee member signaling to activists that the peaceful march would likely be cut short yet again by soldiers using crowd dispersal tactics such as tear gas and sound grenades. The demonstration was able to take it’s usual course, as IOF soldiers blocked the path of the activists, and began to surround them from multiple sides. Only ten minutes into the demonstration, the army began firing tear gas and rubber bullets at a small group of international, Israeli, and Palestinian activists only four meters away, injuring International Solidarity Movement volunteer, Ellen Stark. Omar Saleh Tamimi, Amjad Abed Alkhafeez Tamimi and International Solidarity Movement co-founder Huwaida Arraf were arrested as they asked Israeli military personnel to stop firing tear gas canisters and rubber bullets at Stark as she was helped to safety.
Israeli forces then entered the center of the village where they continued firing tear gas, sound grenades, and rubber bullets for several hours. Over twenty five were injured, including an 84-year old woman who suffered from tear gas inhalation after tear gas canisters were fired into her house, and three others who were shot with rubber bullets, including an Israeli activist; four remain hospitalized.
Later in the demonstration, soldiers began shooting rubber bullets through the windows of residents’ houses, shops, and cars, shattering their homes and livelihoods, as they used collective punishment to attempt to suppress these weekly demonstrations.
These incidents comes as the Israeli government intensifies repression of the unarmed, popular resistance to the occupation of the West Bank, illegal land confiscation by settlements such as Halamish, and construction of the illegal apartheid wall. Two weeks ago in An Nabi Saleh, 14-year-old Ehab Fadel Beir Ghouthi’s skull was fractured as a rubber bullet shot by the Israeli military, leaving him in a coma for several days. He remains in a hospital in Ramallah where he is recovering; his condition is stable and improving.
Today and every Friday since January, around 100 un-armed demonstrators leave the village center in an attempt to reach a spring which boarders land confiscated by Jewish 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 bullets and stun grenades.
The Halamish Settlement has confiscated nearly half of An Nabi Saleh’s orchard and farmland since it was founded in 1977. According to village residents the settlement confiscates more land each year without consent or compensation of the landowners.
Soldiers who are supposed to be protecting villagers from settler attacks occupy a house in Iraq Burin.The Israeli military sent eight jeep loads of soldiers to Iraq Burin, near Nablus, on Saturday to prevent villagers from accessing their farmland. Violent settler attacks on previous Saturdays leave the villagers and their land threatened. The military’s solution to these attacks has not been to protect the Palestinians, but rather to deny them access to their land.
As the men of Iraq Burin sat peacefully at the edge of their village, watching soldiers and settlers on their terraces and in their olive groves on the opposite hillside, another group of soldiers approached from the hill immediately above the village.
Contested fields in Iraq Burin.With no apparent provocation or reason, soldiers fired volleys of tear gas and percussion grenades at the assembled villagers, then seized houses at the edge of the village to fire rubber bullets and more tear gas into the street. Despite this barrage of weaponry, villagers refused to run and hide, and the soldiers ultimately retreated at dusk.
Several Palestinians and one international were hit with rubber bullets and tear gas canisters, though no serious injuries were reported.
Members of three evicted families from three different generations speak to the crowd in Sheikh Jarrah.Thousands attended last Saturday’s demonstration in Sheikh Jarrah, demanding an end to the home evictions which have displaced hundreds of Palestinian residents. Gathering peacefully for speeches and live music in the park opposite the neighborhood, demonstrators chanted and sang before marching in the streets and attempting to pass the police barricades which obstructed demonstrators from reaching the neighborhood itself. Settlers held a small counter-demonstration in a nearby street.
Thousands demonstrate in Sheikh Jarrah to support evicted families.Following the demonstration, Palestinian and settler residents returned to the neighborhood. As the street filled with people, a group of several dozen riot police ran down the street towards the gathering crowd. After clearing the crowds to the sidewalk, police began grabbing the International activists who were standing peacefully on the sidewalk. In the minutes that followed, the activists were pushed to the ground, pulled by the hair and repeatedly wrestled out of the arms of those trying to free them from the chaos. Two Internationals were violently kicked in the head while on the ground, later suffering headaches, dizziness and disorientation. No provocation for this violent attack can be discerned.
The Israeli military today continued their attempts to repress the weekly demonstration in An Nabi Saleh. Following on from their near fatal shooting of a 14 year old boy a week ago, soldiers invaded the village within minutes of the demonstration starting, driving jeeps to within approximately 50 metres of the demonstrators and firing upon them with tear gas, percussion grenades, rubber bullets and rubber-coated steel bullets. nab
Despite the military resorting so rapidly to violence, the villagers, accompanied by Israeli and international activists, determinedly continued their attempts to reach the nearby springs that have been usurped by settlers from the illegal settlement of Hallamish. A number of demonstrators were able to get close to one of the springs before soldiers again fired upon them to force them to retreat. Demonstrators who remained within the village were fired upon from above by soldiers who had occupied the same house from which they shot the boy the previous week.
At least 12 Palestinians sustained injuries from Israeli weaponry, three of which are reported to be serious, including two head wounds. nab2
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. The demonstrations protest the illegal seizure of valuable agricultural land and the uprooting in January 2010 of hundreds of the village resident’s olive trees by the Hallamish (Neve Zuf) settlement located opposite An Nabi Saleh. Conflict between the settlement and villagers reawakened in the past month 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 the 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 it’s establishment in 1977.
