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.
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.
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.
Friday, March 8th, saw a large demonstration in the West Bank town of Qaffin against the annexation wall. The demonstration was organised by the Qaffin municipality and featured a large block of activists from the Democratic Union. Approximately four hundred Palestinian and international demonstrators marched to wall to be met by two Israeli army jeeps. The soldiers initially fired live ammunition into the air and then in the direction of the protesters. Tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets were then used to attack the non-violent demonstration. Three people were hit by the rubber coated bullets, but were not seriously injured. After an hour the protesters returned to the town.
Qaffin, just north of Tulkarem has a population of around 10,000. The size of the town has more than halved in the last 13 years as settlements and the annexation wall have stolen the towns agricultural land. 120,000 olive trees are currently on the west side of the wall, and a further 12,000 were razed to make way for the walls construction. The Israeli army also regularly invade the town, and 280 of the towns population are currently in Israeli jails.
Dozens of residents of Bil’in, a village near Ramallah, took to the streets on Friday in their weekly demonstration protesting the illegal confiscation of the village’s land through Israel’s continued expansion of the wall.
The residents were joined by many International and Israeli peace activists, in addition to supporters of the Palestinian Democratic Federation Party (Fida), who were celebrating their eighteenth anniversary.
Protesters carried signs condemning the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip and others demanding the dismantling of the wall that is causing serious hardships for farmers in the village.
The protesters were stopped by Israeli soldiers at the pass-through gate of the wall and were prevented from reaching the land that has already been confiscated from their village. Israeli soldiers then used tear gas and sound bombs to disperse the demonstrators.
Palestinian youth participating in the demonstration responded by throwing rocks at the soldiers, who then began firing rubber-coated steel bullets. An Israeli peace activist, identified as Marina, and a Palestinian protester, identified as Naji Shouha, were moderately wounded by Israeli gunfire. Additionally, a number of Palestinians and Internationals were treated for tear gas inhalation.
Two houses in the village of Far’un, near Tulkarem, are under threat of imminent demolition as the deadline given by the Israeli authorities for residents to evacuate their homes has come and passed.
The original deadline, which fell on 3rd February 2008, was met with a show of community resistance, with up to 100 villagers holding vigil outside the endangered houses, accompanied by eight international human rights workers. The community presence seemed sufficient to dissuade Israeli authorities from sending bulldozers to demolish the structures before the lawyer for the families could make an appeal of the High Court of Justice. A deadline extension was won, providing the families’ lawyer with ten more days in which to argue their case with the Israeli authorities. This deadline too has now passed, with no assurances the houses will be saved.
The homes, built on the western perimeter of the village, both lie within 50 meters of the segregation wall. Israeli authorities usually require the separation wall to have a “buffer zone” of up to 200 metres of empty land for security purposes. The houses, however, were built in 1998 – six years prior to the construction of the wall, which was completed in the Tulkarem region in 2004. Nonetheless, Israeli authorities have declared the houses “illegal structures”, despite having needlessly constructed the wall so close to residential dwellings.
Eight nearby homes have also been demolished since the construction of the wall – two in 2003 and six in February 2007 – causing chaos in the small village of only 3000 residents, as the forcibly displaced home-owners were compelled to move in to relatives’ homes.
Another nearby home has also received two written warnings advising residents to demolish their own home – a third letter will advise of impending Israeli destruction. The local primary school for boys is also under threat, as one-half of the school grounds lie within the projected “buffer zone”.
The residents currently live in a state of fear and uncertainty – as they have been doing in the four years since their neighbours’ houses were first demolished in 2003. One of the home-owners, a 35 year old man, has remained single, waiting to marry until he had finished building his house so as to have stability to offer his intended family.
