ISM activists joined residents of Deir alGussoun today in a demonstration against the Apartheid Wall. The Wall cuts deep through the village’s land, located to the north of Tulkarem. In an extreme number of arrests, 18 Palestinian protestors were arrested by soldiers in the aftermath of the demonstration.
Meeting in Deir alGussoun this morning, approximately 50 protestors marched from the village towards the Wall, where Palestinian youth succeeded in forcing open the gates on the first of the series of three high fences comprising the Apartheid Wall in the Tulkarem area. Their efforts were met with sound bombs and tear grenades from the 3 army jeeps positioned on the other side of the fences.
The demonstration came to an end an hour later, after which demonstrators began constructing a stone road block on the dirt road leading back to the village, hoping to pre-empt a military entrance through the wall to the village following the protest. This was not enough to deter the army, as 18 youth were arrested, on charge of causing damage to the fence. None have been released as yet.
120 families of Deir alGussoun have been cut off from 2,500 dunams of land by the Wall’s construction, many of whom have never been given permission to access their land since. The Wall has been declared illegal under international law by International Court of Justice in the Hague.
The International Solidarity Movement is issuing a call-out for internationals to volunteer as field activists and office workers in the West Bank, Gaza, and occupied East Jerusalem this summer.
Whether you can come for only few weeks or several months, your presence is needed to support Palestinian communities who are nonviolently resisting the Israeli occupation. Freedom Summer 2009, which will run from June 6th until August 15th, aims to challenge the continued theft of Palestinian land for the rapid expansion of illegal Israeli settlements and their infrastructure in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Volunteer training sessions will be held every week on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Visit our “Join Us in Palestine” section to read more information about volunteering.
Below are some of the actions ISM volunteers can anticipate this summer:
ISM volunteers will stand in solidarity with the Palestinian families of occupied East Jerusalem who face dispossession.
International activists will join families in Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, Shu’fat, and other neighborhoods whose residences are threatened, in resisting evictions and demolitions with non-violent, direct actions methods. ISM volunteers will also participate in demonstrations against discriminatory Israeli policies and support ongoing organization of Palestinian heritage and cultural events.
In the West Bank, volunteers will join Palestinian villagers in nonviolent demonstrations against the Wall, and other apartheid infrastructure of the occupation such as checkpoint, settlements, and Israeli-only roads. Activists will be working in communities such as Ni’lin, Bil’in, Jayyous, Husan and Tulkarem to support direct actions under Palestinian popular leadership. Recently Israeli military violence during nonviolent demonstrations has escalated, making it more important that international solidarity activists are present to help deter and document the repression from Israeli forces. Additionally, volunteers will accompany farmers and shepherds to deter violence from the Israeli military and settlers. In the South Hebron hills, the army’s designation of large areas as military closed zones will be challenged.
The ISM volunteers in the Gaza Strip will continue to accompany Palestinian farmers who frequently face live fire from the army as they work their land in the buffer zone. Volunteers will stand in solidarity with the people of Gaza against the crippling siege and sporadic attacks on the region. Several ISM activists will be joining the Free Gaza Movement’s Hope Fleet that will sail into Gaza’s port at the end of May. International activists will mass on the Egyptian border with Gaza between the 22nd of May and the 14th of June, in an attempt to challenging the ongoing closure and isolation of the people of Gaza. Individuals interested in volunteering with ISM Gaza must have previous experience with ISM in the West Bank.
Come to Palestine to support the Palestinian people in their struggle against occupation. Become an eyewitness to the Palestinian struggle for freedom! ISM volunteers have become better advocates for the freedom and self-determination of the Palestinian people in their home communities.
This summer, support and participate in the Palestinian non-violent resistance to the Occupation by using direct action methods to defend the land of East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Ahmad Droubi and his 80 year old father, Mahmoud, were refused access to their olive groves located within the illegal settlement of Avne Hefez for the third time this week, despite having received prior permission from Israeli authorities.
Private security guards at the settlement refused to allow the farmers, accompanied by international activists, entry to the settlement – first denying them entry outright, and then telling the farmers that they would be allowed to enter the settlement if they traveled around the settlement to the back gate. The farmers complied, making the long trip through the rocky olive groves, to find the back gate locked and abandoned.
After waiting for over an hour, attempting to convince the Israeli District Coordination Office (DCO) to uphold their coordination, the farmers gave up trying to harvest their olives. Representatives from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) claimed that it was the farmers’ fault that they were not allowed to enter their lands, because they provided their land ownership papers directly to the Israeli DCO, rather than sending them through the Palestinian DCO. Such bureaucratic nightmares are a mainstay of the Israeli occupation, working to keep Palestinians from their lands; transfer ownership of lands from Palestinians to the Israeli state; and deny Palestinians identification cards.
The Droubi family’s lands were encircled by the settlement walls five years ago, when its boundaries expanded. Having already lost more than 240 dunums (60 acres) of land when the settlement was first illegally built in 1982, it has been extremely painful for the family not to be able to access their remaining five dunums. “Since five years we have not been to our land, we have not even seen our trees. Once i went to try to look just to see if there was any fruit on the trees. But the grass was so long I couldn’t see anything”, says Ahmad. “For my father these trees are like his sons, because he planted them. He says that they are even better than his sons, because the trees are obedient and we are disobedient”. There is one olive tree that remains outside of the settlement fence. The elderly Mahmoud rode his donkey around the settlement to find it, and brought back olives to the family, “Just for the memory of the trees”.
Usually the family is unable even to visit this one tree, or to even to try to see the trees through the settlement fence. Watching farmers pick outside of the settlement, while waiting at the gate, Ahmad commented, “If it was not olive harvest season, they [soldiers] would shoot them”.
The village of Shufa in Tulkarem has been without electricity for the sixth day in a row, after the municipality generators, which are the only power source for the village, burnt out.
Shufa has inexplicably been denied connection to the main electricity grid by Israeli authorities since 2001, despite the fact that all of the necessary towers and lines are in place. “Many times we have tried to take electricity from Tulkarem municipality or from Israel, but Israel will not allow” says a local resident.
Until six days ago, the village was supplied with electricity from the municipality-owned generators for six hours each day – from 6pm-12am; less if the price of diesel was high. The cost of the electricity they provided, however, was prohibitively high, at five shekels per kilowatt. In the city of Tulkarem, residents pay less than one shekel per kilowatt. This has forced residents to keep their power usage to a minimum, with monthly power bills regularly exceeding 500 shekels to run just lights and refrigerators for six hours each day. One resident of Tulkarem compared, “I have air-conditioning in the summer; heating in the winter; washing machine, everything, all 24 hours a day. And my bill is just 250 shekels each month”.
Now residents have no electricity at all. “I am sorry I cannot offer you cold water”, apologised one resident, Ahmad, “there is no electricity, so the refrigerator is not running. Yesterday my mother had to throw out all of the food. All of the chicken and meat from the freezer – it all went bad”. There is no knowing when there might be electricity again, as the Shufa municipality cannot afford the repairs to the generators. It is estimated that just to transport the generators to be repaired will cost 20 000 shekels. “I asked the head of the local council”, reported Ahmad, “He said, ‘really, I don’t know”.
While the village mosque, and a few of the wealthier residents have private generators, the rest of the village is dark at night. “If you come during the night, it is a tranquil place, like a cemetery.”
Whilst, lawfully, Israel should have no power to deny Shufa electricity, in practice, the power lines will necessarily pass through Area C – the areas of the West Bank that, since the 1994 Oslo agreement, are under full Israeli local government and security control. This denial thus begs the question as to why the Israeli authorities would do such a thing. The answer may lie in the strategic utility of the village, whose name “Shufa” refers to the fact that the village occupies a prime position for visibility of the surrounding areas. Many believe this is a strategy to drive the Palestinians from the village.
If this is the case, it is a strategy which is working. In the past five years it is estimated that more than 30 of the 150 families in the village have left, seeking a better life elsewhere. Prior to this, many villagers also moved from Shufa to Izbit Shufa – the lower part of the village, separated by a 1km road blocked at four points with earthmounds – because of the ease of life with electricity and viable transport options, which are denied to Shufa.
While the siege that plunged Gaza into darkness made news worldwide, Shufa suffers in silence. While Israeli authorities are currently dangling the promise of allowing Shufa to connect to the grid in December or January, villagers are not getting hopeful. “They say this all the time”, says Ahmad. “Always they are saying, maybe in one month, two months, three, you will have electricity. It never happens”. Until it does, the residents of Shufa may well continue to spend their nights by candlelight.
On 28th of June the Israeli army entered a Summer camp for children in Qaffin and detained one boy of 13 years old for five hours. To get him released the mayor was forced to agree to shutting down the camp. The army claimed that boys had been throwing stones at the nearby wall. They also claimed that the camp was in a military closed zone. Furthermore, the army has given the mayor a list of fifteen wanted boys who they claim are making trouble.
Qaffin, a village if 10 000 people, lies north of Tulkarem very close to the Green Line. The village has a lot of problems because of the wall, which stop them from reaching their land.
The summer camp has been running for four weeks and the Israeli army has been around almost every day. In the camp, the children do sports and art training among other things. The summer camp is part of the bigger struggle against the apartheid wall and another purpose is to give children something to do during the summer holidays.
On the day of this occasion, 150 children were in the camp. They got scared as the military entered the camp, and most of them ran away. Now they are scared to come back, and it is still unclear if the camp can be reopened.
One month ago the Israeli army detained five children, who they claimed had been throwing stones close to the wall. In order to get them released each family had to pay a fine of 7000 NIS. With this fresh in mind, the mayor is now concerned about the consequences of reopening the camp, since it might cause a lot of problem for parents and children of the village. However, he doesn’t like the idea of completely closing the camp.
