Tag: Tulkarem

Tulkarem Protesting Jebara Chekpoint

For Immediate Release

A series of nonviolent actions will take place in Tulkarem this week against the dehumanizing checkpoints surrounding Tul Karem as well as the separation barrier that have destroyed the areas economy.

The first action will occur at Jebara checkpoint Saturday, March 4 at 10:30 a.m. People in Tulkarem will mobilize from the bus station to meet activists from outside the city at 11:00. The action will address the occupation’s devastating effects on the Palestinian economy.

Thousands of students, employers, teachers, patients, worker, and traders use the checkpoints each day to move between surrounding villages and cities. They are often subjected to unnecessary humiliation tactics in addition to long waiting periods and frequent denial of access.

for more information call:

Shareef 0599370445 Tulkarem

Nine hours to get home

by Ash
August 20, 2005

UPDATE: Last night, five Palestinians were killed by the Israeil Occupation Forces in Tulkarem

On the way home yesterday, I was stopped 6 times at Israeli checkpoints traveling from Ramallah to Tulkarem. These were not pop-up checkpoints this time — a little different this week — but concrete at both ends with a cover for soldiers’ equipment.

Israeli checkpoints are symbolic of the daily humiliation we face. Not only do Israeli soldiers keep us waiting for long hours; the entire procedure is an attempt to make us lose our humanity, to degrade us so that we feel worthless and sub-human. Sometimes Israeli soldiers ask people to take off their clothes, sometimes people are forced under gunpoint to eat during the fast in Ramadan.

When I arrived at Jabra, just four km outside Tulkarem, a soldier told our bus driver that we were not authorized to go to Tulkarem through this checkpoint, so we had to turn around and try the only way left. We made our way to Innab roadblock, which consists of a metal bar that cuts off Tulkarem city from the nearby villages. A huge razor barrier, about 15 ft high, is built on the right side of the road equipped with an Israeli watch tower. We got out of the bus and passed the new metal bar which had been put in only a few days earlier.

More than 60 Palestinians were standing in two lines on both sides waiting for one Israeli soldier to come and check their IDs. The soldier checked IDs and luggage on either side of him while four other soldiers stood watching!!

People were frustrated and angry as they were made to wait for a long time and, of course, it is not in the soldiers’ mandate to speed up. One woman walked toward the soldier checking IDs and said “You stole our land, our water, our air. Why are you restricting our movement? What more do you want?” The soldier shouted, “Shut up!” then ordered everybody to move 20 feet back and headed away to drink water! He looked at us and smiled. Then after 10 minutes he walked lazily forward and said “Yallah! (Let’s go! in Arabic) One by one!”

After the soldier looked at my ID and checked my bag, I took a service (shared taxi) to Innab, then walked around the metal bar and took another service to Tulkarem.

On the way to my village of Saida, 16km to the south of Tulkarem, an armed military vehicle, parked on the side of the main street just 6 km outside of the city, was stopping dozens of vehicles from moving. While we were waiting, two Israeli soldiers stopped a bus on the other side of the street. All passengers got out and the two soldiers asked everyone to pull up their clothes while one soldier on the top of the armed vehicle was aiming his M-16 at them.

After 30 minutes, our moment of being humiliated came. Two soldiers walked toward our taxi. One got close to the window and asked the driver where he was going. The driver answered, “We are going to Saida village”. The soldier opened the door in the middle and asked one young Palestinian to step out; then he came to the front seat where I was sitting and punched me on the shoulder and said, “Get out!”. We were standing just five feet in front of the two soldiers. The same soldier again asked us to pull our clothes up and turn around. Then he took my ID and asked, “Where are you going?”. “Saida,” I answered. “Where do you live?”. “Saida,” I replied again. Then the soldier said, “Yalla”!

Two days ago when I was in Bil’in village, I went with an Israeli friend to Tel Aviv for the first time since I was 12 years old! My friend told me that it’s easy to get to Tel Aviv, but I was very concerned since I am a Palestinian, and it is illegal to travel there. It’s like another world for us. We took a taxi at around 9:30 pm to the nearby village, Dier Qaddis to the west of Bil’in and walked for three minutes to reach a settler road. I was breathless, and scared that I might be caught by Israeli border police.

We continued walking on that settler road until we reached Modo’een Elite settlement, which is built on Bil’in’s land. I was standing at the entrance that has a lighted stone arc, looking at the beautiful and fancy buildings they have – green trees and a fountain – wondering if the people who live there know that their government is stealing more land from the Palestinian farmers and families of Bili’n to build their houses!

After 20 minutes, a settler pulled over to give us a ride to a stop station, where we picked up a bus straight to Tel Aviv.

If Israeli checkpoints are for ‘security’, why don’t they set up checkpoints in Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv? Why were there no soldiers to check my ID that night? Why did no one stop me from going inside Israel? Were the Israeli soldiers off duty in Tel Aviv?

All this makes me think that maybe it is the “Israeli democracy” that is trying to break our spirit and take our freedom under the big lie of security and peace.

A Family from Saida

By L.

We met with a family from Saida at the home of one of their relatives. Here, we were filled in on the situation. They recounted that the Israeli army had occupied the house of Sharif Abdul Ghani four days ago. Whilst stationed there, some of the soldiers came further into the village and raided the house of Sharif’s brother Shafik, a martyr who was killed by the Israeli Occupation Force two months ago. It was midnight when they woke up his widow and their four children. The soldiers searched everywhere in the house. In the clothes cupboard was a packet containing US $4,624 that was being saved for the son, a two year old boy, to have an operation on the hole in his heart when he is old enough. As the soldiers left, they warned the woman not to talk to anyone or to use the phone. She was scared, and when she discovered that the money had been stolen she waited until about 5am when she called people to tell them what had happened. She went with her brother’s wife to the occupied house to complain about the theft, but the soldiers laughed at her and told her she was lying. She called the Palestinian District Co-ordination Office, which takes people’s complaints to the Israelis. She also informed B’tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, in the hope that they will be able to follow up on it in her behalf.

We were in the village of Saida, outside Tulkarm, which has suffered tremendously under the Israeli military. Soldiers have occupied the same house repeatedly. We listened as the family told us their tragic history: two brothers killed, one in prison.

The family wanted us to go to the house, speak to the soldiers about the money, and to try to persuade them to let one of the family members go inside to get some belongings. They also wanted a chance to confront the soldiers about their being in the house in the first place. We set off with a group of about twenty men, women and children.

When we arrived at the bottom of the driveway of the occupied house, the soldiers started yelling at us to go away and fired into the air to try to scare us off. Obviously they did not anticipate the indomitable spirit of the old mother who was with us, who slowly made her way towards the house regardless of the yelling and shooting, accompanied by we four internationals and her son, the rightful owner the house.

The soldiers were edgy and not at all happy about the group of people half hidden behind a bush at the bottom of the driveway. At one point the soldiers announced that they would fire at the floor to try to make the people leave. Luckily they refrained. The old woman shouted up at them in Arabic, which at least two of the soldiers appeared to understand well.

Eventually the group below us disappeared and the man who remained was permitted to go inside and collect the things he wanted. He also made the soldiers follow him as he fed the pigeons. Fantastic. At this point, a photographer who was present tried to take some photos of the man, flanked by two soldiers. He was told by the commander not to, because “It looks bad….One man with two soldiers.” I couldn’t quite get my head around this statement. Of course it looks bad. The whole thing looks bad. It is bad!

The most laughable quote of the day, though, came from an American soldier from New York. When we questioned them about the stolen money he replied: “Israel has the most ethical army in the world. We would never do that.” We refrained from listing countless atrocities, not least the occupation itself…

I am wondering whether there is any way to raise the necessary money for the baby’s operation. His mother was with us for the afternoon, and she was a person that I felt an immediate affinity with. On the way to the house she showed me the spot where her husband was killed. The car he was in remains wreckage on the hillside below. On the way back she pointed out to me the place where her husband used to sit with his friends, on a terrace underneath some olive trees. How does she cope with seeing these things whenever she walks through the village?

Shop flattening scheduled by illegal expansion

Eight shops next to the Israeli Chemical factory built on land stolen from Tul Karem municipality are scheduled to be destroyed in fourteen days. Built in 1996, and owned by Ali Qasim, the shops have been closed since September 2000 due to IDF operations including gunfire, rendering the village unsafe.

Seventeen propriotors received notices on a piece of paper written in Hebrew and in Arabic that the building would be destroyed. The paper stated that they had three days to respond.

A group of IDF soldiers in Jeeps pronounced on a notice building that the shops would be destroyed. Proprietors were informed that their buildings are illegal because they are not registered with a municipality.

The owners however, have written proof of registration and proof that they have been paying taxes to the Tul Karem Municipality.

Tulkarem choked by Israel’s illegal chemical fumes

Today’s Freedom Summer action was focused on the presence of a toxic chemical factory at the edge of Tulkarem. The Israeli-owned factory was originally located near residences in Israel, but was deemed to be polluting beyond acceptable legal levels. Following a court case in Israel, it was moved to the West Bank city of Tulkarem in the mid-eighties. The complex of factories has been expanding ever since, spreading like the cancer that the output from the factory induces.

This issue represents a particularly dangerous dimension of the occupation for the Palestinian people. As I stood looking up at the chimney and IOF watchtower inside the factory compound, it occurred to me that this was a large, ugly weapon, slowly but surely attacking the people around it.

Tulkarem has the highest cancer rates in Palestine. Residents living near the factory also suffer disproportionately from respiratory tract diseases and other health problems. The land around the factories has been labeled unsuitable for agricultural production, and farmers have faced extreme difficulties getting to it. One farmer has been shot at a number of times by the owner of the chemical factory. He has decided to convert his farm to organic production a decision which reflects the strength and resilience of the Palestinian people. No attempts have been made to clean the surrounding environment or dispose of the chemical waste safely – it is being repeatedly dumped on nearby Palestinian land.

The protest began with a march from the centre of Tulkarem towards the factory. We wore blue surgical masks to highlight the danger of inhaling the factory fumes, but as we approached the factory and began to smell the foul stench in the air I was genuinely glad to be wearing it.

Our group of Palestinian, Israeli, and ISM Activists, proceeded from the centre of Tulkarem to the factory located at the city’s edge. We walked carrying gravestone shaped signs in Arabic and English proclaiming the death of the environment, justice, freedom, and human rights, in addition to the disregard of organisations such as the World Health Organisation and the International Court of Justice.

Arriving at the factory, which is in close proximity to the Apartheid Wall around Tulkarem, the demonstrators placed the “gravestones” outside the main gate and began to chant. Messages were sprayed on the wall and we banged on the gate with stones, but nobody responded and the military did not turn up.

I only hope that they do not punish the farmers involved in the protest later, when we have left the city.

Photos can be viewed at: freckle.blogs.com/photos/no_more_poison/

The factories in Tulkarem are one of many sites throughout the West Bank where Israeli industrial complexes are situated. The companies are free to operate outside of Israeli laws regarding health and safety, the environment and the treatment of workers. The Palestinian workers come from a pool of very cheap labour; they have no rights and, following the economic strangulation of Palestine over the last five years, are desperate to work, even if this means going to a settlement and working in unhealthy or dangerous conditions. The factories are built on stolen land and disfigure the beauty of the West Bank, causing environmental problems and flattening agricultural land with concrete.