Tag: Tulkarem

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.

A 9-year-old child was injured in a demonstration in Far’un near Tulkarem, on Tuesday 24th June. Approximately 100 activists from Tulkarem joined residents of Far’un in the demonstration against the apartheid wall and the house demolitions ordered as a result of its construction.

Demonstrators marched to the two currently threatened houses, bearing a banner that read “This is Apartheid!”, as well as Palestinian and party flags; and chanting “No! No! to the wall!” and “This wall must fall”. Members of the Struggle Front party gave speeches, before protesters marched to the houses that had already been demolished because they stood within the arbitrarily implemented 200m “security buffer zone” – despite the fact that the houses were built long before the wall. Children attached flags to the razor wire on the wall, in defiance of the Israeli signs warning of mortal danger.

After approximately 20 minutes, one Israeli jeep arrived on the military access road beside the wall – a double fence topped with razor wire here – and fired a single rubber-coated steel bullet at the demonstrators as they marched to the demolished house closest to the wall. The bullet was illegally fired from only 20m away, aimed for the head of an elderly man, who ducked just in time. The bullet then ricocheted and struck 9 year old Mohammad Abdel Kareem Salim Bdeir in the leg at high speed, creating a large welt on his inner thigh.

The young boy was treated in the nearby school, after which the activists continued their demonstration – highlighting the apartheid nature of the wall and the demolitions. Many Israeli jeeps and an armoured personnel carrier (APC) arrived as the protest was coming to a close. The jeeps then however entered the village, blocking the path of the bus that was carrying the activists back to Tulkarm, and surrounding it with soldiers on foot, who would not move until human rights workers started photographing them.

The two threatened houses both lie within 50m of the apartheid wall, and despite the fact that they were built in 1998, 6 years before the wall was constructed in the Tulkarm area, they have been declared “illegal structures” by Israeli authorities. The owners were issued with demolition orders – ordering them to demolish their own homes by 3rd February 2008, or else face destruction at the hands of Israeli bulldozers. The orders constitute no idle threat – 8 other homes nearby have been demolished – two in 2003 and six in 2007. Another nearby house has received two letters of warning advising the owners to demolish their home – the next communication they receive will be advice of imminent Israeli destruction. Also under threat is the local boys’ primary school – half of which is within the 200m “buffer zone”.

The owners of the threatened houses joined together in February of 2008 to fight the demolition orders in court, but their case has failed. Concerns have arisen within the community as to the wisdom of taking the case to the high court – the next possibility in the legal battle – for fear of setting precedence if they lose – as has happened with the case of the unrecognised village of Al Aqaba, near Tubas. With the Israeli legal system heavily stacked against Palestinians, many feel that in order to pursue a legal battle, the owners should take their case to the International Court of Justice – a court in which they are much more likely to receive a fair hearing.

In the meantime, the villagers will not sit by and idly wait for bulldozers to enter their village yet again. They have vowed to fight against this system of apartheid that keeps them from their neighbours in the Palestinian village of Taybeh, annexed by the wall; that shoots rubber-coated steel bullets at children; that threatens to demolish their homes.

To view the International Women’s Peace Service (IWPS) website, click here

On Friday the 13th of June the village of Qaffin held a demonstration against the wall as part of their ongoing protest camp.

On the 5th of June the protest camp was launched with a festival and the establishment of several tents and containers close to the apartheid wall, which separates the village from about half of its land. The camp will continue throughout the summer with a program of cultural and political events.

Today more then a hundred people gathered in the camp to hold their Friday prayers. Supported by internationals from the International Women’s Peace Service, they then marched towards the separation fence. The demonstration headed towards a spot in the fence which is supposed to be an agricultural gate, but has not even the facilities to allow passage and has never been open. Several military vehicles were present on the military road of the fence, separated from the demonstration only by barbed wire. Soldiers kept pointing their guns at the peaceful demonstrators as they were holding banners against apartheid and chanting anti-occupation slogans.

As the demonstration was dissolving, military vehicles also came to the fields inside of the fence and into the village. A stand off between the youth and the Israeli military ensued. Villagers later reported one of the youth was hit by rubber coated steel bullet.

The soldiers eventually left the village after about an hour. Even though the villagers fear more reprisals for their resistance, the protest camp will continue.