Tag: Tubas

“Martyr Palestine,” A new play in an old Israeli prison

The first of its kind: Palestinians prepare art demonstration in old Israeli prison
by Jameel al-Husni, 4 April 2007

Defying the traditional Palestinian method of denying expressions of the occupation, Wasfi Tayeh, the leader of a local theatre group in al-Far’a refugee camp in the northern West Bank, is preparing a new show. The show, in which a group of young men are going to perform inside rooms that used to be dungeons in an old Israeli prison, will be the first of its kind.

The play, called “Martyr Palestine,” will be shown without the use of lights, since it is going to be performed during the daytime. In the place, the cells, torture seats and rooms of interrogation are still as they used to be, while the walls of cells are filled with nationalist writings of Palestinian prisoners during their imprisonment period.

Directed and written by Tayeh, the play is going to be performed in an aisle lying between two rows of cells, capable of hosting 300 people.

“This is going to be the first performance of its kind in a place like this,” Tayeh said, pointing at the cement stage where prisoners were tied for torture. Tayeh leads an amateur group working with minimal supplies on the local level. The crew is going to prepare a real prison atmosphere that shocks the visitors once they step in.

There will be checkpoints, army tents, insults by the actors from the very beginning of the script. Wasfi said that this is going to be part of the show, meaning there will be moans of prisoners under torture inside their cells in one of the side shows of the play.

This exhibition is organized by the Palestinian Prisoners Club in celebration of the Prisoners’ Day, coinciding with the 17th of April. Club manager Mahmoud Issa said that this demonstration reflects what the prisoners used to live inside these dungeons, left as is after the Israelis left.

The dungeons were built during the era of the British mandate and used then as stables for horses before being used as a prison. After the Palestinian Authority (PA) was transformed into “Young Leaders preparation center” called Salah Khalaf Center, named after one of the prominent leaders of the Palestinian revolution.

Center manager Marwan Wishahi said that the project is compatible with the educational and modern mission of the center, which aims to maintain the history of this place as a witness to acts of killing and torture.

“This initself is a connection between the place and what used to happen in it, and the history,” he said.

The current works are clear proof of the Palestinian people’s will, transforming detainment camps into symbols of freedom. “Part of our plan to rehabilitate the center involves transforming the dungeons into a museum for the prisoners’ movement. We have great ambition to gather the verbal history of this place,” he added.

The organizers of this event said that the show will be directed to an audience from the United Kingdom, who is visiting the Palestinian territories next April.

Incurion and Arrests in Tubas

Incursion and Arrests in Tubas
from Brighton Palestine, 4 April 2007

On Monday April 2nd the IDF entered the town of Tubas (in Area A – the ‘Palestinian controlled’ area of the occupied West Bank). Around 40 soldiers and several vehicles surrounded the home of Ibrahim and Hamid Daragmeh and told the family that they had to leave or they would ’shoot everybody’.

Residents reported that Ibrahim and Hamid had already been arrested and were being detained in the army vehicles outside.

The soldiers searched the house, breaking down one door leading to the upstairs rooms, but found nothing.

The convoy then drove to the Tubas branch of Al Quds Bank, surrounded the building and entered the bank.

The manager of the bank refused to comment on what the soldiers did inside the bank. Israeli press later reported that the arrests had been due to a ’suspicious deposit’.

Ibrahim and Hamid both live and work in Tubas. Their family were shocked at their arrests and do not know where they have been taken or what they have been charged with. It will be difficult to find out where they are being held until after the Jewish holiday. Many Palestinian prisoners are detained, charged, imprisoned and tried inside ‘1948′ Israel; families of prisoners often cannot obtain a permt to cross the Green Line. Palestinian prisoners are tried by Israel under military law whereas Isaeli settlers or civilians in the West Bank are governed by Israeli civilian law.

Tree planting as popular resistance in the Jordan Valley

by Jamil al-Husni

It is surely a celebration. Everyone is bustling about, preparing for the day’s activities. But it is different than a typical celebration. Instead of carrying brightly colored drinks and holding plates of food, people are carrying shovels and pick-axes to plant seedlings as part of a plan to grow trees throughout the Jordan Valley. Palestinians consider trees as one of the most effective weapons against the Israeli occupation.

In the eastern heights area overlooking the isolated Jordan Valley, residents of several villages began this past Tuesday to plant different kinds of trees as part of the campaign “For a Green Palestine,” sponsored by a local foundation. The “celebration” was in full swing in the village of al-Aqaba, located at the head of the eastern heights of the Jordan Valley, and designated for demolition as part of settlement expansion. The residents are saying that they are planting trees as part of an ongoing popular resistance campaign.

It is expected that more than 3,000 olive and evergreen trees, delivered by the Palestinian Organization for Development, Dialogue and Democracy – “Wa’ad,” – will be planted in different areas around Tubas and the Valley. The coordinator of the organization, Mahmoud Issa, said, “Planting one tree in an area threatened by settlements is the most effective weapon to face the Israelis.” He added that several areas targeted by the Israelis will be planted with olive trees.

Rashid al-Debik, a local villager, was busy putting twenty seedlings in a cart, which he will be planting in front of one of the Israeli army’s bases adjacent to his village. He said that there is another forty dunums that he will try to plant if the Israeli army allows him to do so. Standing at the edge of al-Debik’s land, near a large hole dug by the Israeli army, one can see the vast area of the eastern heights. One man helping with the project said that one of the biggest problems he and others face is the shortage of water in the area.

Mohammad Hussein Jaber and other men from his family are busy moving olive seedlings and evergreen trees. In an area nearby, a bucket-shovel begins working, easily breaking through the moist soil. In less than ten years, the village of al-Aqaba, which had been occupied by Israeli soldiers and military camps, became a village bustling with people and replete with trees.

The head of the village council, Sami Sadeq, said that the residents took the decision to plant trees as a popular means of resistance. Sadeq is responsible for organizing the process of distributing the trees and planting them throughout the village.
Al-Debik is determined to plant his land that overlooks a military camp “I will plant and they [the Israelis] will uproot, but I will win in the end.”

However, soldiers denied access to those planting seedlings in a number of other villages nearby without offering a reason. Residents of al-Maleh village in the Jordan Valley reported that soldiers on duty at al-Tayaseer checkpoint at the entrance of the Valley barred them from transferring 200 olive tree seedlings to their village. In that area, residents suffer from a shortage of water resources to cultivate land. The area is under Israeli control in accordance with the Oslo accords.

Since 2000, Israeli forces have uprooted thousands of olive trees as part of its military policy. The construction of the wall has greatly damaged agricultural life in the West Bank, since wide areas have been confiscated or compromised by its construction. Reports indicate that the Israeli army has bulldozed more than one million trees in the past few years.

Palestinians ethnically cleansed from the road

by the ISM media team, February 13th

In recent months Occupation authorities have escalated their policy of issuing fines to Palestinian drivers at certain checkpoints without reason. At Za’atara checkpoint near Salfit today, as well as preventing drivers with Nablus ID from passing and meticulously searching them, the IOF issued fines to some Palestinian drivers.

The issuing of fines has been practiced extensively in the Jordan Valley region. At Taysir checkpoint between Tubas and the Jordan Valley soldiers were observed handing out NIS 100 fines to Palestinian drivers for not wearing seatbelts when they were wearing them. On a trip through the Jordan Valley last month an international volunteer witnessed his Palestinian driver being similarly targetted, this time for not wearing a seatbelt and for not “driving quietly”, incurring a NIS 250 fine.

This practise is clearly designed to discourage Palestinian drivers from using certain key routes. Za’atara is the main checkpoint between the north of the West Bank and the central Ramallah region whilst the Jordan Valley is an area of key strategic interest for the Occupation due to its fertile agricultural land and water resources, 96% of which has already been annexed. The Occupation tightened the already strict movement restricitions for Palestinians last October.

The issuing of fines to Palestinian drivers is the latest form of economic warfare being waged against Palestinians in the Occupation drive to ethnically cleanse them from their land.

Jordan Valley Isolated

by Jamil Husni,

After having finished a hard-working day in the area, three Palestinian Water Authority employees reached al-Hamra checkpoint in the Jordan Valley, on their way to Ramallah. The Israeli army refused to let them through, claiming that their permits are for West Bank checkpoints only.

Othman Sheikha, the wells’ observer in the West Bank said of his arguement with an Israeli soldier: “He demanded special permits to enter the Jordan Valley, other than the permits we have.”

His colleague, who seemed to be less nervous than him said “in order to reach a village or agricultural area in the Jordan Valley, you have to prove to the Israeli army that you are not a West Bank resident.”

He added: “Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley are one issue,” referring to Israeli intentions to dominate these two vital areas.

Israel prevents all West Bank residents from entering the Jordan Valley under security pretexts. This is a real yet unofficial Israeli policy implemented by the army in an area they call the eastern isolation area.

“The next goal for Israel is the Jordan Valley or 30% of the West Bank. There are procedures that Israel does in secret and in public to annex the Jordan Valley and to isolate it from the rest of the West Bank” says Hami al-Masri, a political analyst.

Issa Zboon, director of Geographic Information Systems Unit in the Applied Researches Institute (Areej), said that the area of the eastern isolated zone, from the eastern mountains to the Jordan River, is about 1555 km². According to him, Israel has in effect completed its isolation of the Jordan Valley at the beginning of last year. Even before that, all West Bank residents were forbidden to enter the area due to a law commonly known as the “Identity Law”.

This law, which is enforced by Israeli soldiers at all checkpoints surrounding the isolation zone, forbids non-residents of the Jordan Valley from entering the isolation zone. The soldiers would check the ID card of each passenger to make sure non-residents stayed out, hence the name of this effective policy.

Israel has never issued such a law officially, and always claimed that the procedures in the Jordan Valley are security procedures and not politically motivated. Practically one third of the West Bank is out of bounds for Palestinians.

Zboon said the isolated zone constitutes 27% of the West Bank area, which totals 5561km². Another 10% of the West Bank is in the western isolation zone, behind the wall. The link between the eastern and the western isolation zones, which the Israeli government is trying to establish, is a strip of land taking up to 6% of the West Bank.

“This is stated in the Kadima project about unilateral disengagement and drawing final borders of Israel within 10 years.” Zboon clarified.

“Israel is not wasting time creating facts on the ground, thus making negotiations impossible.”

The checkpoints of the Jordan Valley are so impressive and thorough it gives the impression of crossing the Green line. They are very similar to those on border crossings between countries.

Dr. Ayman Daraghmeh, a PLC member from Tubas, said what Israel doing in the Jordan Valley area has “obvious political goals.”

“There is no Palestinian state without the Jordan Valley borders and real geographic continuity,” said al-Masri.

Palestinians depend on the Jordan Valley for their food and water. The area underwent during the initial years of the Israeli occupation a massive settlement campaign, termed by occupation authorities the “Israeli agricultural settlement”.