Tag: Tulkarem

The Guardian: Area C strikes fear into the heart of Palestinians as homes are destroyed

By Rory McCarthy

Original article published in The Guardian on 15th April 2008, click here

In the end it came down to a single-page letter, written in Hebrew and Arabic and hand-delivered by an Israeli army officer who knocked at the front door. The letter spelt the imminent destruction of the whitewashed three-storey home and small, tree-lined garden that Bassam Suleiman spent so long saving for and then built with his family a decade ago.

It was a final demolition order, with instructions to evacuate the house within three days.

If Suleiman was in any doubt about the Israeli military’s intentions he had only to look outside his back door where large piles of rubble and broken concrete mark the remains of the seven of his neighbours’ houses that were demolished in the same way last year.

“How would you feel when you’ve spent 20 years finishing your life’s project?” said Suleiman, 38, a teacher. He began moving his furniture out after the letter, from the civil administration of Judea and Samaria, the defence ministry department responsible for the Israeli-occupied West Bank, came on January 31. Now there are just a couple of plastic chairs in his front room and in the hallway the carpets are rolled up and ready to be moved. Clothes are piled on the floor and the shelves are empty, save for a stack of documents charting the story of the impending demolition. His brother, Husam, has already left the ground floor flat but the new washing machine and fridge stand still wrapped in plastic. Suleiman, his wife and two children wait for the bulldozers.

“Everything I did in my life was for what’s now inside this house and now it’s going to be destroyed,” said Suleiman. “It’s very hard for me to find somewhere else to live.”

The Israeli authorities argue that Suleiman’s house was built in a part of the West Bank known as area C, a designation from the era of the Oslo Accords which means Israel has full military and administrative control. In order to build, a Palestinian must apply for a permit from the Israeli authorities. If there is no permit – as in Suleiman’s case – the building is liable for demolition.

Area C covers 60% of the West Bank, home to around 70,000 Palestinians. It is also the area in which most Jewish settlements, all illegal under international law, are built. Compelling statistical evidence shows that while it is extremely hard for Palestinians to obtain building permits, settlements continue to grow rapidly.

Research by the Israeli group Peace Now found that 94% of Palestinian permit applications for Area C building were refused between 2000 and September 2007. Only 91 permits were granted to Palestinians, but 18,472 housing units were built in Jewish settlements. As a result of demolition orders 1,663 Palestinian buildings were demolished, against only 199 in the settlements. “The denial of permits for Palestinians on such a large scale raises the fear that there is a specific policy by the authorities to encourage a ‘silent transfer’ of the Palestinian population from area C,” Peace Now said.

This year there has been a marked increase in demolitions. There were 138 demolitions between January and March, most in area C, compared with 29 in the last three months of 2007, according to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs. This year 400 Palestinians have been displaced as a result. At a time of a renewed peace process to create an independent Palestinian state, the reality in the West Bank is that Jewish settlements are growing and demolitions of Palestinian homes are on the increase.

The problems of the village of Far’un, south of Tulkarm, are complicated by the vast West Bank barrier, which here runs away from the 1949 ceasefire line that divides Israel and the Palestinian territories. The wide, steel fence, which passes just a few dozen metres from Suleiman’s home, cuts off the village from a slice of its agricultural land and underground water reserves and has turned this area into a dangerous no-go zone: in December 2006, a 14-year-old Palestinian girl playing nearby was shot dead by an Israeli soldier.

Suleiman’s house and that of his neighbour Emad Hassahsi, which has also received a demolition order, were built before the barrier arrived, in an area they were told – and they have letters that appear to support their claim – was area B, in which Palestinians have administrative control and therefore somewhere they thought they could safely build. Only later did the Israeli military announce it was in fact area C. There are similar disputes about the exact delineation of the different areas elsewhere the West Bank.

Israel’s civil administration offered no explanation for the rise in demolitions but told the Guardian: “The procedures that are carried out before the materialisation of a demolition order include: issuance of an order to cease building that is usually issued in the early stages of the construction of foundations; numerous deliberations at the high planning and zoning committee and of course an open door to the supreme court of justice. These procedures are valid for both Palestinians and Israelis alike.” It said the buildings demolished in Far’un were “built illegally without the required licences”.

One effect of the strict planning curbs is to limit the growth of Palestinian villages. “If you look at the way the Israelis are enforcing planning and construction regulations you see they are being enforced in a one-sided way,” said Avi Berg, research director of the leading Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, which has worked on the Far’un case.

Settlement growth continues apace despite the fact that the current peace talks are based on the US Road Map, under which Israel is required to freeze settlement activity. In another report, Peace Now said that since the talks began at Annapolis last November, Israel was still building 500 homes in West Bank settlements and had issued tenders for 750 homes in East Jerusalem settlements. Reports suggest another 1,400 homes will be built in two settlements in East Jerusalem and in the West Bank.

The Israeli government defends the continued settlement construction particularly in the major settlements which it calls “population centres”, saying it will not build new settlements or expropriate more land. “In the population centres and in Jerusalem the reality on the ground will not be the same in the future as it is today,” Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert said last month. “There will be more additional building as part of the reality of life and this is something that was explained …”

Not all the cases of demolition involve homes. In January, Israeli forces uprooted 3,200 trees, destroyed water cisterns and stone terraces in fields near Beit Ula, close to Hebron, in the southern West Bank. Again this was in area C. The civil administration said the demolition was an “enforcement activity” carried out after legal warnings.

But in this case the target was a €64,000 (£51,000) project from the European commission which began two years ago to provide a livelihood for the villagers, several of whom also put their own money into the planting.

“It was a tragedy for us,” said Sami al-Adam, 46, a farmer who had put in 45,000 shekels. “They’re tearing me out by my roots. They want to destroy Palestinian farmers psychologically and economically.”

Land Day commemorations continue in Nazlat ‘Isa, Tulkarm

On Monday 31st March, residents of the Tulkarm district continued their Land Day demonstrations with a protest against the separation wall in the village of Nazlat ‘Isa.

Approximately 100 protesters confronted Israeli soldiers as they attempted to march to the separation wall that denies freedom of movement to Palestinians – preventing farmers from reaching their lands, and families from visiting each other. Waving flags and holding banners, demonstrators demanded to be allowed to approach the wall, standing defiantly as soldiers tried to push them back.

“Go home!” Cried women from the local Women’s Committee. “Leave us alone! This is our land!”

The demonstration, organised by the Tulkarm Women’s Union; municipalities of Nazlat ‘Isa and Tulkarm; numerous political parties; and social organisations, intended to march down the main street of Nazlat ‘Isa, which was once a thriving hub of commerce, but now surrounded by empty fields where over 180 shops were bulldozed by the Israeli army in 2003 to prepare for the construction of the wall. The march was then planned to continue on along the route of the wall until it reached the house that in 2004 was built into the wall itself. Here demonstrators were to protest against the fact that seven houses of the village were separated from the rest of the village by the building of the wall, preventing family members from ever visiting them.

Israeli soldiers insisted that protesters could take another route to their destination, but that at no point would they be allowed to march near the wall. Demonstrators refused this “offer”, and insisted on protesting as close to the wall as possible.

15 kilometres north-east of Tulkarm city, the village of Nazlat ‘Isa has been crippled economically by the occupation. In 1948, the village lost 10 000 of its 12 400 dounums of land; and then another 824 dunnums from the construction of the separation wall (300 for the wall itself, and another 524 has been isolated from the village by the wall). Prior to 1948, 97% of the villagers were farmers; now, following the destruction of the market place and factories in 2003, and the construction of the wall, 97% of the villagers are unemployed.

For over an hour the stand-off between demonstrators and Israeli soldiers continued, with Palestinians remaining non-violent despite the march through their own lands being curtailed by the presence of the occupying army.

Tulkarm Continues Land Day Commemmoration, Israeli Military injures 2

Today, Friday, March 28, 2008 two demonstrators were injured with rubber-coated steel bullets (one seriously), as the second of Tulkarm’s Land Day demonstrations took place in the village of Deir al Ghusun, 8km north of the center of Tulkarm. The focus of the demonstration was against the separation wall – which prevents farmers accessing their land, as well as preventing freedom of movement.

Approximately 100 people took part in the demonstration, which was organized by the local municipality, in conjunction with the local popular committee and heads of political parties in the area. Protesters carried banners that read: “On Land Day we will continue our struggle against the wall; the occupation; and the siege.”

Demonstrators marched to the wall that separates them from their lands and families, chanting and waving flags. As they approached the gate that allows only ten percent of farmers to pass through to their lands on the other side of the wall, Israeli soldiers threw sound bombs into the crowd, causing protesters to scatter. The soldiers then fired tear gas and rubber bullets at the protesters from behind the gate, injuring one man, Fariz Tanib, aged 50 years, in the leg, and an employee of the local municipality, Hazem Omar, aged 41 years, in the forehead. Hazem was rushed to hospital with a head injury that required 4 stitches.

The protest marked a refusal to submit to the loss of land that has occurred since 1948 – when 18,000 dunnums of village land were assigned to Israel by the green line; and more recently in 2004 when the separation wall isolated farmers from an additional 2,400 dunnums of their land, as well as taking 300 dunnums for the route of the wall itself. Abu Sayad, member of the Deir al Ghusun popular committee, says that now there is only 6,000 dunnums left for the village, which has a population of 10,000.

Local political party leaders today committed to continue the demonstrations against the wall weekly.

Tulkarm Holds First of Many Actions Commemmorating Land Day

On Thursday the city of Tulkarm began the first of its Land Day demonstrations – a national event held on 30th March each year to commemorate the killing of seven Palestinians citizens of Israel by Israeli soldiers in 1976, during protests over land confiscation.

The city began by replanting trees along Al Khadouri street – once a tree-lined avenue, now barren because the trees were destroyed by Israeli bombing during the first and second Intifadas. Organized by a collaboration of local and national institutions, such as PARC, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Farmer’s Union, the local municipality and Palestine Technical University, around one hundred conifer trees were prepared to rehabilitate the street.

Approximately forty children from local primary schools, internationals, Israelis and local Tulkarm identities such as the mayor, all took part in the planting, which extended from the site where the first tree was destroyed, all the way to the Israeli-owned Geshuri chemical factories that cause enormous pollution and health problems for the residents of Tulkarm. Asme, from the Public Relations department of Palestine Technical University, explained that involving the children in the action by getting them to plant trees helped to “explain to the children the importance of the land; to mark the anniversary of Land Day in an active way. When the child plants the tree, and every day he sees the tree, it will be very good. He will watch it growing.”

Once the street was completely re-lined with trees (identical in species to those destroyed), approximately 150 demonstrators marched the length of the street, in the direction of the Geshuri chemical factories, and then along the compound wall of the factories themselves, to protest against the presence of such dangerously polluting factories in Tulkarm.

The Israeli chemical factories, including factories for ammonia, fertilizers, plastics, pesticides, fungicides and herbicides, were originally built within Israel, near Tel Aviv, explains local activist and journalist Abdul Karim. They were forced to shutdown in 1984, however, because of the danger of the pollutants they produce. They were relocated to Tulkarm in 1987, onto land confiscated by the Israeli government, a large percentage of which belonged to the agricultural college of An Najar university. The local residents of Tulkarm are not the only ones concerned about the dangerous pollution that purportedly gives Tulkarm one of the highest rates of cancer in the West Bank (some claim in the world) – Abdul Karim reports that Israelis on the other side of the factories (which border on Israel and are in fact surrounded by the separation wall) protested against the factories also. However, because the location is within the West Bank, Israeli authorities apparently claim that it is out of their jurisdiction. The Israeli’s protests did, however, grant one concession: now every year in May, (the one month in the year when the winds blow from East to West, instead of from West to East) the factories are forced to halt their operations, so that nearby Israeli’s do not suffer from the pollution that is blown across Tulkarm for the other eleven months of the year.

Demonstrators gathered at a disused gas station across from the factories – damaged by Israeli army tanks in 2002, and forcibly abandoned along with all of the other shops and restaurants along this once bustling strip, due to persistent army presence and firing from 2001-2003, when the area became a combat zone.

The owner of the abandoned gas station addressed the crowd, explaining that what happened to his building is reflective of what is occurring across the entire West Bank, and called for the chemical factories to be uprooted. Jamal Said, advisor to the governor of Tulkarm, then spoke of the high cancer rates in Tulkarm, and the general negative effects of the chemical factories on the health of those living in all of Tulkarm, but especially those living close to the factories.

These actions marked the first in a week of Land Day activities for Tulkarm, which include two more demonstrations against the separation wall, as well as photo exhibitions and festivals throughout the city.

Farmers protest against being denied access to their lands

On Thursday, March 13th, the farmers of Deir Al Ghusun, a village north of Tulkarm, gathered at one of the gates restricting them access to their land to confront the Israeli military. The farmers and other members of the village sat in protest in front of the gate demanding that it be removed. The village has three supervised gates that are opened three times a day for one hour at a time. The farmers must bring their land certificates to be allowed to work on their land and commonly are turned away for no particular reason.

After 15 minutes of seated resistance and chanting against the gate, the Israeli military had forced the villagers to move back with threats of open fire; the mayor remained asking for the gate to be opened. The Israelis complied and after 20 minutes of failure to open to gate they claimed that there were technical difficulties and they would bring in their commander. As the commander arrived, it was clear that the gate wouldn’t be opened, the Israelis promised that on Sunday the mayor and five farmers would be able to meet with the District Coordination office: the Israeli military office throughout the west bank that grants Palestinians permits for various necessities.