Tag: Settlers

Israeli settlers arson Palestinian land in al-Bueri

2 August 2009

Settlers occupying an illegal outpost near al-Bueri in Hebron District set alight four fields of grape-vines belonging to local Palestinian families just weeks before the grape harvest season is due to begin.

On Saturday residents raised the alarm as the blaze began to spread shortly after midday on land owned by the Zateri and Jaaber families. Separate fires had been set in fields and stone out-building within one hundred meters of the settler outpost. The 77 year-old head of the family which is closest to the outpost, which was established six-months ago is illegal even under Israeli occupation law, explained that the family have farmed the land for at least 150 years. The family are subjected to frequent setter attacks and have received death threats from settler youths.

When ISM volunteers arrived at the scene they found large swaths of scorched earth and blackened vine-terraces. ISMers used shovels and handfuls of earth to extinguish the last of the flames but the damage was extensive.

Where a combination of the road and wind direction meant that the flames had not caught in some vines, bunches of grapes had been ripped from branches and left to rot on the ground.

Hebron settler stabs Palestinian

2 August 2009

Hebron is a divided city. Around 500 hundred Israeli settlers illegally occupy buildings in the city centre and to accommodate them the lives of over 180,000 Palestinians have been thrown into disorder.Palestinians’ movement through their own city is severely restricted: thousands of Israeli soldiers man checkpoints along a line of segregation that cuts through the city; in order to pass Palestinians must present their ID cards and can be detained arbitrarily. Some roads and sidewalks are segregated – Palestinians have to walk on small divided sections. Local residents are forbidden from driving on many streets and what was until recently a bustling main market street is now forbidden to them. Step-by-step, house-by-house the settlers plan to take over all of Hebron and expel the local Arab population.

Settlers in Hebron are part of the most extreme Israeli right-wing movement. The leader of the Jewish National Front, Baruch Marzel, lives with his family and many supporters in the heart of the city. Still the residents, traders and shopkeepers at the core of the ancient Old City resist the encroaching settlers. It is not easy. Each Saturday afternoon one of several military barriers separating the Old City from the illegal settlements swings open – no one knows which barrier will be opened from one week to the next – and an Israeli Army patrol sweeps in. Many shops close, streets are blocked off, residents cannot access their homes and normal life comes to a halt. The soldiers are there to escort groups of Israeli settlers who come to see buildings that they claim should only be occupied by Jews.

On Saturday 1 August settlers climbed over a roof onto the home of the Palestinian Al-E’wewi family in full view of Israeli soldiers and pushed a large metal water-tanker to the ground several floors below. During the hot summer in this dry region water is scarce and the Al-E’wewi’s are so poor they will struggle to replace the tank which has been vandalised by settlers many times before.

Settler boys took up positions on roof-tops which are designated as closed military zones under Israeli law and intimidated passers-by while Israeli soldiers looked on and happily chatted to them. Later in the afternoon settlers attempted to assert their dominance over the local population. Young setter men decided to break away from the main group moving through the Old City. As they swaggered down the narrow streets of the Old City Israeli soldiers began to call them back. The settlers’ views are so extreme that despite all the restrictions the Israeli Army imposes on local people, soldiers are viewed by settlers as being too soft. Angry at not being able to run riot a settler attacked an Israeli soldier, punching and kicking him.

However, rather than arresting the violent settler the soldiers told him to calm down and let him continue away from the main group. Settler leaders shouted at the soldiers that they should not interfere with the young man. Quickly a group of young seller men rallied round their friend and made their way through the streets. They attacked a Palestinian’s car, breaking-off a wing mirror. As they passed local shops they cursed and screamed at shopkeepers who had dared to stay open.

International Solidarity Movement and Christian Peacemaker Team volunteers worked together to witness document and record the actions of soldiers and settlers and saw their behaviour first hand.The Israeli soldiers had lost control and decided to escort the settlers from the Old City. Angry at being unable to assert themselves in their usual manner the settlers decided to lash out.

An innocent Palestinian man, Nizam Azazmeh (32), who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, was attacked by ten settlers. Using a blade, they slashed his forehead, arms and stabbed him in his chest. Israeli soldiers standing nearby refused to intervene to help the victim and he saved himself only by grabbing a police shield and defending himself.

Mr. Azazmeh filed a complaint to the Israeli police but, despite having security cameras covering the area of the attack, the police have yet to arrest any settlers.The man survived and has submitted a complaint to the Israeli police.In the meantime the residents of Hebron hold their breath, waiting for the next time settlers lash out.

Israeli forces evict the Hanoun and al-Ghawe families from their Sheikh Jarrah homes

UPDATE: Seven of the arrested activists were released after court, with a condition to not be in Sheikh Jarrah for 3 weeks. One American solidarity activist has been taken to the immigration prison for deportation.

Another international activist is reportedly refusing to give her name and intends to go on hunger-strike, according to the released activists who were in detention with her.

Rami Hannoun is being treated at a local hospital after being beaten by Israeli forces.

For Immediate Release:

2 August 2009: Israeli forces have evicted the Hanoun and al-Ghawe families from their homes.

At around 5:30 in the morning, Israeli police arrived at the Hannoun family home and broke into the house through the windows. They forcefully removed Maher Hanoun, his wife Nadia and their 3 children. The police violently separated the family from the international and Israeli solidarity activists that were staying in the home. Police then arrested the international and Israeli solidarity activists that were staying with the family. Similarly, Israeli police came into the al-Ghawe family home at 5:30am and removed the family and internationals staying in the home.

Settlers arrived with a truck and began to move the al-Gwahe Hannoun family possessions out of their home. Everyone outside of the house was forced across the street, away from the house.

According to eyewitnesses, Israeli forces beat a Palestinian male who was trying to intervene when police were yelling at an elderly Palestinian woman. Additionally, media personnel were pushed around by police when they were trying to get close to the evicted Sheikh Jarrah homes.

Amongst those arrested are at least 7 international activists and 1 Israeli activist. They are scheduled to be brought to court in Jerusalem at 11am.

Maher Hannoun, Palestinian resident of Sheikh Jarrah:

Despite condemnation from the international community about the evictions of my neighborhood, Sheikh Jarrah, the Israeli government continues to pursue the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem. My family were refugees from 1948 and now we have become refugees again. We were forced out of homes to make way for settlers, contrary to international law. The legal case that residents presented in court included an Ottoman-era document which discounts the settler associations claim of ownership over Sheikh Jarrah land and homes. But the unjust policies of Israel to judaize East Jerusalem render our legal proof of ownership irrelevant.

Jody McIntyre, a British solidarity activist:

I woke up to the sound of a brick through the front window. By the time I could get up, I was being pushed out the door by Israeli forces. They wouldn’t allow me to take my wheelchair and were physically violent towards me and the others in the Hannoun house. The unjust policies of the Israeli government are not just written documents, they affect real families. The government has made the Hannoun and al-Ghawe families homeless, and their only crime is being Palestinian in a system that is racist against them.

The case of Sheikh Jarrah

The Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem was built by the UN and Jordanian government in 1956 to house Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war. However, with the the start of the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, following the 1967 war, settlers began claiming ownership of the land the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood was built on.

Stating that they had purchased the land from a previous Ottoman owner in the 1800s, settlers claimed ownership of the land. In 1972, settlers successfully registered this claim with the Israeli Land Registrar.

The 28 families of Sheikh Jarrah face eviction from their homes. In November 2008, the al-Kurd family was violently evicted from their home in Sheikh Jarrah. Two weeks thereafter, Mohammad al-Kurd died from a stress induced heart attack.

In 2004 Nadav Shargai from Ha’aretz reported that: “A process of Judaization has already begun . The compound is currently, and
gradually, being cleared of its Arab population by means of legal procedures.” (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml? itemNo=481362&contrassID=1&subContrassID=7&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y)

Militant Jewish settlers set up 11 outposts in the occupied West Bank

Rachel Shabi | The Guardian

28 July 2009

Israeli settler groups have set up 11 new outposts in the occupied West Bank, in a direct rebuttal of mounting US calls to freeze settlement activity.

Young Jewish groups are reported to have set up the structures – mostly tents and huts on hilltops – in the West Bank over Monday night, in a move timed as a precursor to the meeting between the US special envoy, George Mitchell, and Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu today. On Monday, hundreds of settlers set up an outpost near the Palestinian village of Tulkarem, reportedly without intervention from the Israeli army.

Settler groups said they were mimicking the fabled activities of 1946, when the area was ruled by British mandate and 11 Jewish outposts were defiantly erected in the Negev desert during one night.

The mostly young Israelis are associated with settler organisations such as Youth for Israel, a militant group set up in response to Israel’s evacuation of settlements in the Gaza Strip in 2005.

According to the Jerusalem Post, settlers were canvassing support and distributing flyers over the weekend at existing settlements in the West Bank – which, like the outposts, are illegal under international law.

One flyer read: “The nations of the world do not want us here and we are responding by strengthening the connection to the land and by establishing new communities.”

Haaretz newspaper reported that 40 teenage girls spent three days in an established West Bank outpost in “spiritual preparation” for the “relentless battle on the right to settle the Land of Israel”.

One 16-year-old girl from Tel Aviv told the paper: “I don’t know if I personally would live in an outpost but it contributes to the entire people of Israel that the land is being settled.”

Today, the Israeli army chief of staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, said he had not received orders to prepare for the evacuation of outposts in the West Bank.

Netanyahu and Mitchell said they had made progress in their meeting in Jerusalem to discuss the settlements issue, but reported no firm development.

Protest over Sheikh Jarrah house continues

Abe Selig | The Jerusalem Post

27 July 2009

A woman was arrested in east Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood on Monday evening, after a scuffle broke out between police and foreign left-wing activists who were protesting the entry of Jews into a nearby home the previous day.

The house is the subject of a legal dispute in which the Jewish claimants, who say they purchased the property legally, have been granted the right to enter the premises, although a stop work order had been issued for the property and was scheduled to take effect at 5 p.m. on Tuesday.

Sheikh Jarrah residents, however, said on Monday that the home had belonged to an elderly woman, Mrs. Hijazi, who had recently passed away, and that the Jewish claimants had falsified their ownership papers for the house.

“We have papers dating back to the Turkish government that show this home to be Palestinian property,” said Mitri Nasrawi, who works for the Coalition for Jerusalem, a Palestinian group.

Monday’s protest followed a larger demonstration in front of the house on Sunday afternoon, in which seven people were arrested – including a former Palestinian Authority minister for Jerusalem affairs, Hatem Abdel Kader – after activists and Arab residents clashed with police and the Jews, who had arrived to begin renovating the property.

Activists and locals residents said on Monday they would not stop their protests until the group of Jews had left.

Yelling “settlers out!” and “thieves!” the protesters congregated outside the home as police barred them from entering.

After more than an hour, police began to push back the demonstrators, who were banging on sheet metal walls that had been set up around the property, setting off the scuffle.

“You’re terrorists!” some of the activists yelled as police began to clear the area. “We are here because you are fascists and terrorists!”

But the feelings of local residents ran the gamut from dismay over the new Jewish presence in their neighborhood to downright outrage.

One elderly man approached an Israeli reporter and asked him if “he was a Jew.”

“Yes,” the reporter replied, as the man made a disgusted hand gesture and walked away.

“I don’t have any problem with Jews, I work with them and grew up around them,” another resident, Osama Kedek, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday. “But this is just a provocation here. What would happen if a secular Jew went to live in Mea She’arim? I think there would be protests there as well.”

Kedek also said that while he appreciated the concern of the foreign activists, “it would be better if they used their energy to show their governments what Israel is doing to our neighborhoods.”

A handful of foreign reporters and even a French Embassy worker were on hand to document the demonstration.

Etgar Lefkovits contributed to this report.