Tag: Settlers

Settlers grab Palestinian water springs: U.N. report

by Jihan Abdallah

19 March 2012 | Reuters

A female Israeli soldier stands next to a man-made pool containing water from a spring located near the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, and the Jewish settlement of Halamish, near Ramallah March 19, 2012. REUTERS/Baz Ratner

(Reuters) – Jewish settlers have seized dozens of natural springs in the occupied West Bank, barring Palestinians or limiting their access to scarce water sources, a United Nations report said on Monday.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said it had surveyed 530 springs in the West Bank and found that 30, mostly in areas where Israel retains military control, were taken over by the settlers.

It added that Palestinians currently had limited access to 26 other springs where settlers had moved in and threatened to take control. The report said settlers had not encroached on 474 remaining springs surveyed.

“Springs have remained the single largest water source for irrigation and a significant source for watering livestock,” the report said, adding that some also provided water for domestic consumption in areas not connected to pipelines.

“The loss of access to springs and adjacent land reduced the income of affected farmers, who either stop cultivating the land or face a reduction in the productivity of their crops,” the report said.

It added that settlers had turned dozens of springs into tourist sites and some were used for swimming.

“Settlers have developed 40 springs as tourist sites, deployed picnic tables and benches and given them Hebrew names … It is generating employment and revenue for the settlements and it is a way of promoting or advertising settlements as a fun place,” OCHA researcher Yehezkel Lein said.

David Ha’ivri, a settler leader, said settlers were using the springs “for purposes of recreation and for the people who live here, more so than for tourism purposes.”

In 2009 a spring named Ein el Qaws, located near the village of Nabi Saleh, was taken over by settlers from Halamish, forcing villagers to obtain their irrigation water from other sources, the report and residents said.

“The spring was used to irrigate hundreds of olive and fruit trees in the village and the children used to swim in it, now if we try to go to the spring, the settlers and soldiers come and kick us out,” said villager Nariman Tamimi.

A spokesman for Israel’s military-run Civil Administration in the West Bank said there was free access to the Ein el Qaws spring for everyone, except on Fridays when Palestinians usually mount protests against the spring’s takeover and soldiers keep people away.

He said Israel had curbed illegal building at one spring and had started legal proceedings against work at another site.

About 500,000 Israelis and 2.5 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas Israel captured in a 1967 war. Palestinians seek the territory for an independent state along with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

Palestinians say settlements, considered illegal by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the highest U.N. legal body for disputes, would deny them a viable state.

Israel cites historical and Biblical links to the West Bank and says the status of settlements should be decided in peace negotiations.

Settlers Attack Child in Tel Rumeida neighborhood of Al-Khalil

by Joshua

17 March 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

On Saturday, March 17 2012, illegal settlers in Al-Khalil (Hebron), guarded by Israeli Occupation Forces soldiers, trespassed onto the private property of the Abu Ayesha family and proceeded to attack fifteen year old Said, striking him on his arms.  The settlers refused to begin leaving until police arrived.

 

The settlers had just come from a guided tour of Al-Khalil’s old city, which disrupts life in the Palestinian area every Saturday, as dozens of settlers and soldiers invade the central market, blocking foot traffic, searching people and cars, and generally threatening the local population with violence.

Today’s assault is part of an ongoing campaign of harassment and intimidation against the Abu Ayesha family.  The family was forced previously to build a barrier of rocks in order to prevent similar illegal incursions onto their property, which lies just inside the Israeli controlled H2 section of Al-Khalil. Settlers also routinely come during the night to blast loud music, and make noises, in an attempt to drive the Abu Ayesha family from their ancestral home.

Joshua is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).

In photos: Beit Ommar weekly protest

by Younes Arar
17 March 2012 | Beit Ommar Popular Committee
Hungry striking and demonstrating in solidarity with Shalabi and Corrie – Click here for more photos
The Beit Ommar Popular Committee organized today’s weekly peaceful protest adjacent to Karmei Tzur colony built on the stolen land of Beit Ommar farmers. When we arrived next to the so called security fence surrounding the colony, more than 60 heavily armed Israeli occupation soldiers obstructed our path and tried with aggression to force us back, but we resisted their violence and carried on our protest program.
This protest was in solidarity with Hana Shalabi who has been on hunger strike for the last 31 days in the Israeli occupation jails, and in memory of the ninth anniversary of the martyrdom of Rachel Corrie, who was bulldozed by an Israeli occupation military bulldozer while she trying to stop the bulldozer from bulldozing a Palestinian house in Rafah in the Gaza Strip.
It’s important to note that the popular committee of Beit Ommar has been on hunger strike for the last two days in solidarity with Hana Shalabi.
Justice and Freedom for Hana Shalabi, Long live the memory of Rachel Corrie. LONG LIVE PALESTINE
Younes Arar is a coordinator for the Beit Ommar Popular Committee.

The strangulation of a village

by Sylvia

10 March 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

Sheikh Nasri looks resigned as he describes his home as “the most terrorised village in the country”. With 34,000 uprooted trees in the last two years and some 4,800 dunams of land stolen, the village of Al Jab’a has little to smile about.

Bedouin camp given until the 15th March to demolish their home
Bedouin camp given until the 15th March to demolish their home

Eighteen of the one hundred houses in Jaba have demolition orders on them, their inhabitants unsure of when the Israeli army will storm their homes with bulldozers. Even the Mosque has a demolition order. Homes with licenses from the Israeli courts are none-the-less destroyed to make way for the ever expanding Israeli borders. Nasri laughs as he points out the demolished “Welcome to Al’ Jab’a” sign.

It is difficult for visitors to come anyway.

Set among endless rolling hills, Al Jab’a would appear to be the hidden gem of the Holy Land. Look a few miles south and you will see the great snake of the Israeli segregation wall, winding its way around the village and strangling it economically. Settlements Batayim and Nahal Gebaot are expanding quickly, swallowing up Palestinian land in the process. Israel sees Al Jab’a, located in between, as simply an obstacle to connecting both settlements. If the segregation wall is finished, Jab’a will be enclosed from all sides and any movement in and out will be under complete Israeli control.

Nasri explains that they will probably build in Jab’a a tunnel, manned by Israeli military, of course. Nasri describes the Israeli plans for the village as a form of strangulation.

“They aren’t killing us with bombs or shooting bullets at us. They don’t need to. They are killing us another way.”

Nasri’s home was demolished five months ago. He had just finished building it. Now he pays rent on inadequate accommodation for his 13 family members. Nasri is a man in his senior years and his abject attitude is excusable after experiencing years of brutality and oppression.

In 1997 Nasri’s wife was turned away from a checkpoint whilst in labor, forcing her to give birth at home. His 14 year old son was badly beaten by a soldier 6 months ago when he ask him not to turn his jeep around on his fathers crops. His 15 year old son was held for over 6 months in an Israeli prison for attempting to farm part of Nasri’s confiscated land. In all it is no surprise that the people of Al Jab’a are afraid to demonstrate against this illegal occupation, but their absence from the media makes the Israeli Occupation Force’s job of strangling Al Jab’a even easier.

Some 4800 dunam’s of land stolen in Jab’a

Al Jab’a resident and farmer Abu Feras has had 980 of his olive trees uprooted over the last 4 years, some of which were over a decade old. One hundred and eighty of these trees were planted by the YMCA just last year. He has just been given a notice of demolition on a further 300 olive trees, amounting to 68 dunams of Abu Feras’ land stolen by Israel for the erection of the segregation wall. Abu Feras explains that his house is very close to the proposed segragation wall, so he fears this too will be demolished. A similar eviction notice has been given to a family of Bedouin’s living on the outskirts of Jab’a, who were given until the 15th March to demolish their home or face a demolition by the army. The notice is written in Hebrew.

The strangulation of this village goes beyond the outrageous theft of property and suffocation of economy, but through the humiliation villagers have to face when denied entrance to their land and use of their roads to access such basic things as a hospital when in labor. The main road which passes through the village is for Israeli vehicles only, large road blocks prevent Palestinians from passing through it, The surrounding Palestinian houses watch as Israeli citizens pass freely through the Palestinian land they are denied using.

When asked about life under occupation Nasri speaks with an understanding that life is not like this elsewhere.

“Its not easy to live here. I lived in the States for 12 years. I know what living is. The people here aren’t living, they are waiting to die.”

Sylvia is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).

Israeli flags hanged in Yanoun are a reminder of Itamar settler violence

by Ramon Garcia

7 March 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

 The illegal settlement of Itamar, constructed illegally on the land of Aqraba,  Awarta,  and Beit Furik, has taken a provocative step of incitement in the village of Yanoun, from which Zionists have also stolen land. On 7 March 2o12 illegal  settlers entered the village of Yanoun and rose the flag of Israel over the home of village elder Abu Muhmad al Ajoori, who resides in the lower part of the village. Another flag was suspended over a water reservoir in the upper part of the village. The settlers were then seen by locals, wandering off into the hills.

Yousef Deria, a local activist against the wall and settlements, said locals contacted him following the incident, avoiding any conflict with the settlers who tend to have violent tendencies against Palestinians through their declared “Price Tag Campaign” which violently targets Palestinian villagers.

Deria was accompanied by peace activists and locals as they removed these flags.

Residents of Yanoun have suffered many years of terrifying violence at the hands of Itamar settlers – the murder of villagers, slaughter of their livestock, desecration of crops, property destruction and daily invasions and intimidation by armed settlers. The increasing brutality climaxed in 2002, as settlers rampaged the village, cutting down over 1000 olive trees, killing dozens of sheep, beating Palestinians in their homes with rifle butts, and gouging out one man’s eye.  Unable to stand the fear – and indeed reality – of terrorism any longer, the entire village evacuated at the time, mostly families fleeing to the nearby village of Aqraba.

An international and Israeli activist campaign was launched immediately to allow the residents of Yanoun to return to their lands. A permanent international presence was established in the village by EAPPI which has assisted in encouraging people of Yanoun to return home, and has remained instrumental in what little peace of mind the people of Yanoun have salvaged since they were uprooted from their land. One by one, they boldly returned.

Over the 2002-06 period the entirety of the village’s families eventually came back to their homes and attempted to start their life  in the shadow of Itamar’s ever-increasing outposts that dot the hills surrounding the village.  Approximately 100 people remain in the village – 40 in “lower Yanoun” in the valley, and 60 in “upper Yanoun”, whose houses ascend the hill to where just a few hundred meters away lie dozens of settlement houses and agricultural complexes.

Although the entire village is located in Area C – under full Israeli civilian and military control – and stands at risk of being slated for demolition, residents believe that the settlement’s – and Israeli government’s – strategy is what may already be underway – a gradual exodus of families and individuals as they are confined to an ever-shrinking amount of land, engulfed by the expanding settlement and its violent inhabitants.

There are some who remain though, who are determined to stay – many families steadfastly refusing to relinquish the connection to the land that is rightfully theirs. The very existence of Yanoun today bespeaks its fighting spirit, one that will hopefully continue despite the collective punishment waged on the village.