Tag: Tel Rumeida

Tel Rumeida: As locals march for rights, Israel sprays funeral procession and injures journalist

by Aaron and Silvia

26 February 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

The divided city of Al Khalil (Hebron) was transformed into a war zone this Friday, as thousands of Palestinian, Israeli, and international activists attempted to peacefully reopen the segregated Shuhada Street and were violently attacked by the Israeli military. Soldiers and riot police used tear gas, sound bombs, sonic weapons, and foul-smelling ‘skunk water’ to break up demonstrations at three different locations, resulting in numerous injuries that sent at least 95 to area hospitals. The demonstrations were the culmination of a week of protest against the closure of Shuhada Street and commemorated the 1994 Goldstein Massacre, in which a Zionist extremist murdered 29 and seriously wounded over 150 Muslims praying at the nearby Mosque Al-Ibrahimi. The call for this Third Annual Global Day of Action to Open Shuhada Street resulted in over 35 actions internationally, organized by scores of groups. In Al Khalil, two local demonstrations (organized by Youth Against Settlements and Hebron Defense Committee) directly confronted the racist laws preventing them access to their once-main street in the heart of the City.

Youth Against Settlements

The larger demonstration left after prayers at the Wassaya Rasoul Allah Mosque in the economically strangled Qeitun neighborhood, just inside the Israeli-controlled H2 zone of Al-Khalil. From there protesters marched and bussed two kilometers towards the Qeitun checkpoint, at which Palestinian are denied access to Shuhada street. Along the way, youth activists from across the West Bank kept the atmosphere festive with chants, drums, banners, and street theater. Activists in white clothing covered in red paint lay down across the road, bearing messages of “The Occupation is Killing” and “End Israeli Apartheid”, to represent the economic, emotional and physical suffering of Palestinians under Occupation.

As activists neared the military’s position some hundreds of meters from the checkpoint, they were quickly attacked with repeat volleys of tear gas and sound grenades, driving protesters back and disrupting the peaceful march. Soldiers arrested local organizer Badia Dweik (39), a member of Youth Against Settlements, along with five other Palestinians. As the military pushed forward with further barrages of tear gas, sound bombs, and a noxious-smelling chemical deterrent called ‘skunk water’, demonstrators scattered over several city blocks in every direction. Yet protesters of all ages and backgrounds returned again and again to confront the military aggression, some with stones and burning tires, but most with their presence, voices, and cameras.

Hebron Defense Committee

Demonstrators met with the Hebron Defense Committee in the troubled neighborhood of Tel Rumeida, where Hanaa Abu Haikl has set up a tent in defiance of the closure of the main road leading to her home which forces her and her elderly parents to climb a rocky wall to enter. Settlers in the area have attacked her family with torrents of abuse and violence, even going so far as to set fire to her car. Surrounded by the charred remains of ancient olive trees, the site is now particularly tragic. Their blackened trunks are a painful remainder of what the illegal occupation has cost the Palestinians of Hebron.

The burnt skeletons of the olive trees were decorated with the Palestinian flag on the morning of Friday 24th Febuary. One hundred and sixty Israelis, Palestinians and internationals came together for the morning prayer and a brief discussion of the effects that the closure of Shuhada street has had on the people of Hebron. The atmosphere was impassioned as Hebron Defense Committee leader Hisham Shabarati described the plight of the Palestinian people through the illegal Israeli occupation.

Some 800 demonstrators walked towards an army of soldiers with their hands in the air in a show of peaceful, non-violent resistance. Despite this clear and non-threatening gesture, Israeli soldiers forced their way into Palestinian homes and roofs and began shooting tear gas and sound bombs at the protestors before the demonstration had moved 100 meters. One sound bomb caught a female reporter from the Israeli human rights organizaion B’Tselem in the back. The grenade blew a hole through her bag, badly burning her hand and back.

The march for Shuhada Street | Click here for more photos

A funeral procession was caught up on the street whilst the demonstration was in process. Protesters stood by to allow the body to be carried forth but Israeli soldiers used this opportunity to shoot skunk water at the demonstrators, which hit the body of the deceased and outraged the family.

Fifteen people were injured and brought to hospital following the demonstration and one person was arrested. Though the action ended prematurely, Hebron Defense Committee member Sami stated that the demonstration was “useful”, explaining that it “brought attention to the pressure put on Palestinian people in Hebron. We are here and we’re not going to move; We do not accept the military machine and its response towards non-violent resistance”.

Aaron and Silvia are volunteers with International Solidarity Movement (names have been changed).

Thousands march to end settlements in Hebron

24 February 2012 | Youth Against Settlements
The “Youth Against Settlements” movement marked the 18 year anniversary of the Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre with a peaceful march, as part of Apartheid Week in Palestine, demonstrating through the streets of Hebron, violently broken up by Israeli forces.
Eight thousand of Palestinians from across the West Bank, joined by solidarity activists, participated in the demonstration in Hebron on Friday, February 24th, calling for the reopening of Shuhada Street.  Occupation forces arrested Badia Dweik (39), member of Youth Against Settlements, along with Fadi Quran (24) and four other Palestinians.  Issa Amro, Coordinator of Youth Against Settlements and dozens of others suffered asphyxiation due to overwhelming amounts of tear gas.
Medical sources from Mohammad Ali Hospital reported that the number of injured protesters that arrived to the hospital and were treated was over 80 people. The number of people injured continues to rise as a result of tear gas weapons being used in the region.
The events Friday were only a few of many activities taking place as part of a wider campaign, the 3rd Annual Global Day of Action to Open Shuhada Street.  This year’s campaign was called “Shideh Helek Ya Balad” (a call for Hebronites to join the struggle), organized by Youth Against Settlements.
Unarmed demonstrators chanted for the reopening of Shuahda Street, ending the closure on the city of Hebron, and the removal of settlers from the city.  Other chants expressed solidarity with Sheikh Khader Adnan who had recently ended his hunger strike, as well as calling for Palestinian national unity.
Media spokesperson for the 3rd Annual Global Day of Action to Open Shuhada Street, Tamer Al-Atrash said,
Despite our peaceful, unarmed demonstration, Occupation forces met it with violence as yet another way of supporting the illegal settlement enterprise.  None of this will stop us from continuing our struggle to reopen Shuhada Street, the closure of which results in severe human rights violations.  Worldwide solidarity actions took place today.  thousand of Palestinians from various regions of the West Bank, and representing the full political spectrum, met in Hebron in coordination with national and Islamic entities in the city.
The Annual Global Day of Action to Open Shuhada Street falls on the 18th commemoration of the Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre.  The campaign was launched in 2010 in more than 25 locations across the world, growing the following year to more than 31 locations.  This year over 35 solidarity actions will take place globally.
Shuhada Street is in the heart of Hebron and is the central thoroughfare connecting all corners of the city.  It has been closed since the Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre in 1994.
Youth Against Settlements is a politically unaffiliated national youth movement working to end the Occupation and to dismantle settlements through nonviolent community actions.
On the occasion of the 3rd Annual Global Day of Action to Open Shuhada Street, the Mayor of Naples, Italy, sent the following message of solidarity:
In a normal country, Shuhada Street would be a swarm of workshops, sellers of zatar, barbers and candy artisans.  In a country under occupation, Shuhada Street, is instead subjected to an endless curfew, closed shops, racist drawings and writings painted on walls and doors. Citizens from international movements, as well as Palestinians and Israelis, who are acting in a nonviolent manner to reopen Shuhada Street, represent one of the best aspects of solidarity and humanity.  I send them all my support and hope that Hebron will soon return to be a town of inclusion.  In fact, the Arabic name of the city, Al-Khalil, means “friend” and those who live there cannot, and never will be an enemy.
For more information contact this email : Media.yas@gmail.com

Settler Violence: Broken Glass on Shuhada Street

by Silvia

21 February 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

Five years ago Abed Seder’s wife, Kefah, was shot five times in the chest by Israeli soldiers as she went onto her roof to check her water tank. She was 23 years old and left three sons motherless. He tells me his sons are afraid to go on the roof, which overlooks the illegal Zionist settlement of Beit Hadassah. To an international community, Abed’s struggle is one of trauma and loss, but he tells it with shockingly familiar regularity.

Israeli military is seen often in Palestinian neighborhoods in Al Khalil

Abed´s home is sandwiched inbetween Beit Hadassah and Beit HaShisha settlements, from which he receives regular torrents of abuse and violence. Rubbish and broken glass bearing Hebrew writing litters the path to his front door, bypassing the nets which attempt to catch the used nappies and toilet roles. His windows have been boarded up from the outside by Israeli soldiers in an attempt to prevent settlers from throwing molotov cocktails into Abed´s home. Abed shows me the view from his caged bedroom window, which looks directly onto a neatly planted playground, complete with basket ball court where the children of immigrant Zionists can enjoy the sunshine. As one of them raises their middle finger, Abed tells me that they regularly throw water and beer bottles so they try to keep the window closed.

Perhaps the saddest victim of this has been Abed´s 6 year old son Wadia, who was left blind after Abed´s neighbours threw chloric acid from their rooftops two years ago. He was just four years old.  Wadia has since been seeking treatment in a hospital in Jordan while Abed and his wife can only afford to visit him once every three months.

Shards of glass reflect the hatred of extremist, illegal settlers

In 1967 Israel occupied Hebron along with the rest of the West Bank. The settlement of Kiyat Arba was established on the outskirts of Hebron in 1968, later allowing for communities of settlers to illegally occupy properties such as the Hadassah Hospital and other Palestinian neighbourhoods such as Tel Rumeida. Hebron is currently home to over one hundred thousand Palestinians, who are suffering at the hands of some 500-800 settlers protected by a constant Israeli military presence.

Since the Second Intifada, settler violence has escalated in the city of Hebron with illegal settlers routinely attacking and violating the rights of their Palestinian neighbours. B’tselem has recorded incidents of physical assaults, including beatings, stone throwing and hurling of refuse, sand, water, chlorine and empty bottles. Settlers have destroyed shops and doors, committed thefts and chopped down fruit trees. Settlers have also been involved in gunfire, attempts to run people over, poisoning of a water well, breaking into homes, spilling of hot liquid on the face of a Palestinian, and the killing of a young Palestinian girl.

“Price Tagging” has become a coined phrase for the violent, illegal, Zionist settlers “struggle” as they continue to illegally steal land throughout the West Bank. On 24 July 2008, after Israeli security forces removed a bus that had been placed in the Adey Ad outpost, the head of the settlers’ struggle headquarters in Yitzhar was quoted in Ha’aretz as saying,

“The police have to understand that there will be a very high price tag on any event of this kind.”

He described the harm to Palestinians as “a display of good citizenship that is intended to help the police enforce the planning and building laws in the area on Palestinians, too.” Collective punishment is illegal under international law and is a violation of the Geneva Convention.

B’Tselem has investigated many incidents of settler violence and stated to have found that “Israeli forces intervened late, usually when Palestinians begin throwing stones at their attackers. The late response cannot be justified, as these incidents are part of a pattern and can be predicted.  They conclude that “the security forces must prepare in advance in a way that will enable them to prevent harm to Palestinians.” B´Tselem stated that the authorities have systematically failed to enforce law and order against violent settlers attacking Palestinians.

Abed Seder stands before his home in Al Khalil

Human rights worker Hisham Shabarati explains the relationship between the soldiers and the settlers as a kind of role play, where by “settlers are able to make the actions the military can’t.” He describes settlers as a political instrument able to carry out random and brutal attacks under the protection of Israeli soldiers.

“They have the same agenda; to make life unbearable for the Palestinians.”

Abed Seder’s home in the Old City of Hebron is four hundred years old. His brother and four children live above him and his great-grandfather lived here before them. For Abed, the act of resisting occupation stretches for as far as he can continue to live in the home which he legally owns. Its traditional arched doorways and original winding stairways make his home a desirable target for many settlers looking to move into an area which former Prime Minister David Ben Gurion described as “more Jewish even than Jerusalem.”

As long as Israel protects the rights of illegal settlers in Hebron over the rights of the Palestinian people, Abed and his family will suffer.

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

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).

“Each Arab dog will have his day:” Military raids Khalil youth center

by Tom

22 January 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

In an action that appears to have been carried out purely for the entertainment and satisfaction of Israeli settlers, the center of the activist group, Youth Against Settlements, in Tel Rumeida, Al Khalil (also known as Hebron) was stormed by Israeli soldiers at 3pm on the afternoon of  Saturday 21st  January. Organisation leader Issa Amro was  briefly arrested and taken away without reason.

Settlers surrounded the Centre of Steadfastness and Challenge,  as soldiers broke in and seized Amro while simultaneously seeming to attempt a search of the building.

Amro was forcefully handcuffed behind his back, despite his having a medical condition which means that this should be prohibited; a fact of which Israeli authorities are well aware having detained him on fifteen different occasions last year. He was then blindfolded and taken away to a military base, where he was beaten. Soldiers also threatened to kill him.

Soldiers then proceeded to assault several other activists who were attempting to document the incident, including Badia Dwaik, Tamer Atrash, Hamad Israir and Sundos Assilay, an eighteen-year old girl.

As Amro was taken away, settlers who had gathered for the show cheered triumphantly, spat at him and chanted slogans such as “each Arab dog will have his day.” No reason was given for the arrest and no provocation was made. He was subsequently released without any kind of charge less than half-an-hour later. Many more Jews were visiting the city for Shabbat and the Settler Tour of the old city, and it seems that the army wanted to put on a show for the settlers.

The Youth Against Settlements centre was previously occupied by the Israeli military before being reclaimed for Palestinians in a major victory for the organisation.

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