Tag: Settlers

Al-Aqsa Mosque and its surrounding area attacked 100 times during 2011

22 February 2012 | Middle East Monitor

A study conducted by Al-Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage in Israel has revealed that Al-Aqsa Mosque and its surrounding area has been subjected to around 100 attacks and violations in 2011 alone. The study noted that the attacks varied between physical attacks and plots which pose threats to the sanctity and security of the mosque. The study also documented provocative statements constituting incitement by Israelis to damage the third holiest site in the Muslim world.

The report claims that around 5,000 Israelis, including Jewish settlers and members of other extremist groups, stormed into Al-Aqsa in 2011. The intruders performed Talmudic rituals, sometimes in public, other times in secret, including carrying parts of the Torah inside the mosque.

There has also been an escalation in the frequency of incursions by Israeli intelligence officers and political and official figures into Al-Aqsa Mosque.

More than 200,000 tourists were granted admittance to the mosque, sometimes violating its sanctity by wearing scanty clothing.

Al-Aqsa has witnessed a campaign of unprecedented military presence; strict measures preventing Muslims from going to the mosque; and acts aimed at decreasing the continuous Muslim presence in the Noble Sanctuary, through banning orders and limiting entry to certain age groups. The Israeli Occupation Authorities also prevented 3.7 million Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip from reaching Occupied Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque to conduct acts of worship therein.

While the Israelis have blocked essential maintenance and reconstruction within the mosque compound, Jewish organisations’ calls for the mosque to be destroyed and a temple to be built in its place have increased in number. The year 2011 saw a campaign of excavations and the construction of long, interlinked tunnels underneath Al Aqsa and the surrounding area in all directions. The tunnels are to have “Jewish synagogues and Judaisation centres”. What has been notable about the excavations last year is that they have been more overt, unlike previous years.

Israeli efforts to Judaise the area have included work at the Muslim-owned Buraq (“Wailing”) Wall and the proposed demolition of the historic Magharba Gate Bridge. The report notes that the latter was saved, temporarily at least, by the effects of the Arab Spring and concerns raised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Israel has plans to transform the area around Al-Aqsa into so-called “Talmudic gardens”, which will incorporate tourist centres and commercial shopping malls. All of this is in addition to the increasing number of illegal Jewish settlers and settlements in districts such as Ras Al-Amoud.

The Al-Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage has issued a warning that the Israeli Occupation Authorities could seek to capitalise on the developments of the Arab Spring so as to damage Al-Aqsa Mosque and Sanctuary in 2012. Intelligence reports, it says, predict serious attacks against Al-Aqsa by extremist Jews. Such predictions follow statements by former Knesset (Israeli Parliament) Member Avraham Burg that Al-Aqsa will be demolished or torched while Netanyahu is in office; and this, he claimed, will be followed by the establishment of the so-called Third Temple. In the light of these serious threats to the Holy Mosque, the Foundation called on Muslims and Arabs to put Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa at the top of their priorities for action.

The massacre of 1929 and the War of Narratives

by Aaron 

21 February 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

If you ask an Israeli settler in or around Al-Khalil (Hebron) what calls them to live on contested land, most will speak to a religious connection to the city and the Cave of the Machpelach (“patriarchs”), where Jews, Muslims, and Christians come to revere the biblical figures believed to be buried there. A series of signs posted nearby along Shuhada Street, the once-main road and market district now closed to Palestinians, tell a story of Hebronite Jewish habitation dating from biblical times, brought to a sharp and bloody end with a 1929 pogrom, which resulted in the deaths of 67 Jewish residents and the displacement of the survivors. Citing this narrative, many of today’s settlers justify their occupation of the old city as a rebirth and continuation of this community, a story echoed in publications distributed by the Gutnick Center (a Jewish cultural center) and soldier-escorted weekly tours through the Palestinian market. The problem with this narrative is that no one, not even the survivors’ descendants, agrees on it.

Competing narratives of the 1929 Pogram – Click here for more images

On Monday, February 20th, the Jerusalem Post published an article presenting the conflict between the survivors’ descendants as a microcosm for Jewish public opinion, some of whom support the settlements and a growing number who oppose Hebron’s especially active settler community, one  which Yair Keidan calls “a loaded bomb that can blow up peace altogether.” Both sides have signed petitions to the Israeli government, asking variously to maintain, evacuate, and/or halt settlement activity, and both groups claim a right to the legacy of their parent community.

“You can’t bring back the dead,” said Ya’acov Castel, a survivor from 1929, “but there are people living here now who are carrying out the dream of the Jews who lived here for hundreds of years.” Yona Rochlin, whose family went back many generations in pre-1929 Hebron, argues the opposite—pointing out that the majority of settlers are US immigrants, who have settled in a foreign city unfamiliar with the customs, language, or neighborly habits of the people they claim as spiritual forebearers. Unlike the predominantly Sephardi and Mizrahi (Spanish/North African and Middle Eastern respectively) Jewish minority that coexisted with a Muslim majority for five centuries, she says that today’s settlers “came to the city to take revenge for the 1929 massacre and their main idea was to drive out the Arabs and turn Hebron into a Jewish city.”

Hebronite settlers have many claims to fame, including the first West Bank settlement Kiryat Arba (founded 1968, pop. 7200) and the only settlements within the bounds of a Palestinian city—Avraham Avinu, Beit Hadassah, and Beit Romano, which lie at the heart of the Old City and fall under Israeli military control. They are also known to be among the most violent and hardliner, with many claiming allegiance to the Kahanist, Gush Emunim, and other extremist Jewish political and religious sects. Particularly infamous Kahanists include Baruch Marzel, founder of the Jewish National Front, and Baruch Goldstein, who in 1994 massacred 29 and injured over 150 Muslims at prayer in the Mosque al-Ibrahimi. Today Goldstein, who was killed during the attack, is venerated as a hero and martyr—and his tomb in Kiryat Arba continues to draw extremist pilgrims, even though his shrine was removed in 1999.

Rochlin, a politically active parent and child of conservative Jewish parents, in 1996 coauthored an open letter to the Israeli government, “Message from the original Jewish community of Hebron: Evacuate settlers,” which stated, “[Hebronite settlers] are alien to the culture and way of life of the Hebron Jews, who in the course of generations created a heritage of peace between peoples and understanding between faiths.” She sees evidence of this tradition in the fact that Muslim neighbors intervened to save her family and over 400 more when the Jewish community was attacked in 1929. Who exactly did the killing, and from where, is uncertain—but there is surprisingly little disagreement over the 19+ Palestinian families that sheltered and defended Jews. Although some Palestinian community members invited their neighbors to stay or return, by 1936 the British Mandate had relocated the remaining Jews to Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and elsewhere.

Curiously, although the Israeli Jews’ narratives tell radically different stories, many area Palestinians also know a great deal about the pogrom and mourn the loss of friends and neighbors. For Muhammad, head of the Abu Aisha family who live in the famed ‘caged house’ on Tel Rumeida, where their home is surrounded by settlement homes, it is a matter of family pride that his father is named among the Palestinians to save Jewish residents. Nonetheless, the Abu Aisha family struggles with daily harassment at the hands of settlers, who occupy land all around the home. Hajj Yussef, one of the few surviving Palestinians who responded in 1929, talks about “our Palestinian Jews,” who dressed and spoke like non-Jewish neighbors. To Yussef, like the children of his refugee neighbors, the obstacle to peace in Hebron lies not in difference but attitude and actions: “I have no problem living with the Jews, like we lived many years ago. But today’s settlers are not Palestinian Jews, they came here from abroad. And I have a problem if the Jews live in my country as occupiers and settlers.”

Open Shuhada Street, the international campaign to end Israeli Apartheid in Al-Khalil/Hebron will continue February 20th through 25th, with actions and cultural events in Khalil and around the world. Each day, we will cover a different aspect of the Occupation’s effects on Shuhada Street and the city generally.

Continue to follow www.palsolidarity.org throughout the week for more stories and analysis.

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

Jewish settlers and policemen defile Aqsa Mosque, clash with Muslim worshipers

19 February 2012 | Palestine Information Center

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)– A group of Palestinian worshipers holding a vigil inside the Aqsa Mosque have fended off dozens of fanatic Jewish settlers who tried on Sunday morning to desecrate the Islamic holy site, and clashed with their police escorts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GoxdHdIFzI&version=3&hl=en_US

 

The Israeli occupation policemen spread extensively throughout the Mosque and attempted to secure the settlers’ provocative entry. Three Israeli armed policemen were injured during the clashes with Palestinian worshipers.

According to news reports, violent confrontations are still ongoing between the Palestinians who attempt to protect the Mosque and the Israeli assailants.

The reports also said that dozens of Jewish settlers and policemen gathered near Al-Maghariba Gate, one of the Mosque’s doors, in an attempt to storm it.

Other Israeli soldiers were seen preventing the Palestinian young men and women under age 45 from entering the Aqsa Mosque to help their brothers under attack.

Several extremist Jewish groups spearheaded by a movement called the temple trustees incited recently their followers to storm the Aqsa Mosque to strengthen what they claimed to be the status of the temple.

In this regard, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum strongly denounced the repeated Jewish attacks on the Aqsa Mosque and the malicious intents to demolish it to establish an alleged temple on its ruins.

He added in a press release that Israel is waging a religious war on the Islamic holy sites in the occupied Palestinian land and this war is supported by the US which is the cause of all pains and sufferings inflicted on the occupied Palestinian people.

Barhoum urged the Muslim nation all over the world to rise and revolt for occupied Jerusalem and the Aqsa Mosque and move to confront the Jewish extremists’ attempts to harm the holy Mosque.

Kufr Qaddoum: 5 people injured in demonstration

by Veronica

17 February 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

In advance of last week’s regular demonstration in Kufr Qaddoum the Israeli military attempted to prevent it by turning off the electricity supply to the village from 4AM that morning. But it did not deter about 150 Palestinians from the village from marching up the road towards Qadumim. This week, the lights were on, and again the villagers were out in large numbers to make their peaceful protest, with international and Israeli solidarity activists marching alongside them.

Perseverance and resistance in Kufr Qaddoum - Click here for more images

The main focus of the protest is the opening of the road – a direct route that goes through the Qadumim settlement. Since this road was closed to villagers in 2003, they have had to drive or walk much further around the settlement. As well as taking more time and costing more, this road closure may also have caused fatalities – three people have died in ambulances denied permission to take the direct route to hospital in Nablus. There are other issues affecting the village too, including the theft of land by settlers.

Palestinian flags flew in the cold wind as the demonstration made its way through the village towards the line of Israeli soldiers. It was not long before the teargas started with the soldiers shooting it straight at the crowd at chest height. As people ran, several were injured due to being hit by tear gas canisters or from falls – not knowing whether to face the soldiers and watch for the tear gas being shot at them or to turn and run with their backs to it.

Thus began a running battle, with one side armed with tear gas, rubber coated steel bullets and sound bombs and the other merely with their voices and stones from the ground. At one point the soldiers retreated right back to the illegal settlement, and the demonstrators made their way far down the road towards them, burning tyres and flying Palestinian flags. But shouts from lookouts indicated the soldiers were back and there was a sudden rush back into the village as the tear gas started again. This time the Israeli soldiers came right into the village using all the tools at their disposal to disperse the crowd.

At least five people were hit with tear gas canisters or steel coated rubber bullets, including one Israeli solidarity activist.

Afterwards, Murad Shtewi, a member of the organizing committee in Kufr Qaddoum, explained how the whole village is behind this and will not be intimidated by the Israelis.

They have been demonstrating every Friday since July 2011. Since then Israeli forces have raided the village almost every day and night and 11 young men between the ages of 18 and 33 have been arrested – merely for demonstrating.

“But,” he says “we will not stop our demonstrations until we fulfill our goal of opening the road. And we will do more demonstrations if the Israelis try to steal more of our land, as they did last week.”

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

Al Ma’asara: House on the seam of looming Apartheid Wall becomes center for peaceful resistance

by Aaron

14 February 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

There is a place where a ground-level concrete line runs beside a country road through olive orchards, grape vines, blossoming almond trees, and homes—all Palestinian. This is the projected path of a new segment of Israeli Apartheid Wall through Al-Ma’sara, a small village 13 km south of Bethlehem in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Since 2006, protesters have held weekly demonstrations opposing the Wall’s construction—which was halted in 2009, possibly due to financial constraints. But attacks on Palestinian homes and infrastructure are on the rise, and plans have been announced to renew construction in the near future. One of the few remaining obstacles to the Wall’s extension is the Taqatqa house, a private home in the path of the wall extension, that has become the target of settler attacks and vandalism. In coming weeks the people of Al-Ma’sara, together with Palestinian, International, and Israeli solidarity activists, will converge on the house to restore it and transform it into a center for resistance against the Wall and settlement land theft.

There are many things about this house that recommend it as a site of popular resistance to the next phase of Wall construction.

Located in a fertile valley, the property remains a viable agricultural space in spite of attacks, intimidation and settlement expansion. Where apricot and olive trees were once cut, the family planted grape vines and vegetables. Neighbors said that when Khader Tayatqa, late father of the building’s current owner, suffered a fatal heart attack, it was due to the stress of attacks on his land and family. Nearby lie other properties in contention, including a hill belonging to Raed Taqatqa, who has made his continued presence also into an act of resistance, in spite of determined efforts of Israeli violence to drive him off his land.

After Raed refused to sell, Israeli soldiers removed supporting rocks from beneath his caravan to build a roadblock, damaging it irreparably “by accident.” His home destroyed, Raed built a makeshift structure of cardboard and found materials, which was leveled by settlers.

Such vigilante attacks on Palestinians who resist, on the parts of settlers and Israeli soldiers both, are common—such as an attack on the village of Burin last week.

Along with a favorable location, is the building’s history. Built in 1960, before Israel captured the West Bank and lay claim to its lands, the home is ‘legal’ even under Israel’s stringent permitting system, prejudiced such that Palestinian homes are often demolished using red herring justifications for their ‘illegality.’ As long as repairs only restore and add no additions, demolition of the building cannot be legally supported by the Israeli state. There is also already a history of resistance at this site, where years of weekly demonstrations and a Land Day demonstration have impacted the Wall planning process, such that far less land would be walled off from Al-Ma’sara than from neighboring or similar communities.

House at the Seam – Click here for more photos

The most serious threat now is from settler and soldier attacks which, like those on Raed’s property, are intended to damage the building and discourage resistance. Thus far, while settlers have stolen a door, some electrical wiring and a transformer, the house needs few repairs before it can be inhabited and used for events. As long as it is inhabited, it cannot be taken by the antiquated Ottoman land laws—another tool used to rescind Palestinians’ property rights after they are driven off their land.

“This [house] is a real strong point,” says Mahmoud Zwahre, an organizer from the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee and resident of Al-Ma’sara.“Legally, if we are able to keep this house we are able to keep the land.”

The bizarre set of circumstances that have made Al-Ma’sara, a rural village of about 900, one of the front lines in the battle against Israeli expansionism are sadly familiar to most Palestinians and their international and Israeli supporters. Although the village lies roughly 10 kilometers west of the 1948 “Green Line” (the only internationally recognized ‘border’ between Israel and Palestine) the massive “Gush Etzion block” of seven Israeli settlements (pop. 60,000) lies nearby, products of Israeli’s campaign to produce illegal “facts on the ground.”

These ‘facts,’ in turn are used to justify giving the Israeli military full control of most of the village’s lands and the annexation of thousands of dunums of land via planned Wall construction.

Not only would the wall’s route cut off 3500 dunums of Palestinian lands in Al-Ma’sara and limit access to services in larger communities, but it would also cut off the village’s water access and the primary routes between Hebron, Bethlehem, and Ramallah—three of the largest cities of the West Bank.

Any one of these developments would hit Al-Ma’sara and surrounding villages hard, but together they are intolerable and demoralizing. Even though there is no barrier or construction currently underway, some Palestinian farmers have chosen to stay off lands east of the Wall’s projected path, fearful of settler and military attacks. Others, however, have decided to resist—using the Tayatqa house as a focal point.

When asked what his vision for the house is, Zwahre describes a vibrant social and information center, with Palestinian flags flying and walls painted red, green, white and black. From terraces, he imagines people sitting to drink tea and looking across olive groves and fruit orchards. Farmers avoiding their land below the settlements for fear of attacks by settlers would feel safe working on it. But, he adds, that is just his vision, and it is for all those involved in the development of the center to create it.

The Popular Committees have issued a call for supporters to join them in making this center a reality. They can be contacted at www.popularstruggle.org. Weekly protests against Wall construction are held Fridays at noon, starting from the Al-Ma’sara city center.

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