Clashes broke out after Israeli police fired tear gas and used stun grenades on hundreds of Palestinians who had gathered outside al-Aqsa Mosque following the Friday Prayers to protest against Israeli attacks on the holy site earlier this week. One man was killed amid protests in nearby Qalandia following the Zionist incursion into Al Aqsa.
Some reports, however, suggest that the attack came as Palestinians were praying. The clashes followed nearly a week of unrest at the holy site.
“We were praying when they started shooting tear gas towards us,” 58-year-old Umm Mohammad told AFP.
Four Palestinians were also arrested.
Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is one of the holiest sites in Islam, has been the scene of clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian worshipers since the occupation of Palestinian lands.
On Sunday, Israeli police attacked al-Aqsa Mosque and arrested at least 18 Palestinians after Jewish settlers clashed with Palestinian worshippers at the holy site.
Israeli troops also clashed with Palestinian worshipers in the area on Tuesday and Thursday.
“I hereby assert that I am confronting the occupiers not for my own sake as an individual, but for the sake of thousands of prisoners who are being deprived of their simplest human rights while the world and international community look on,” Sheikh Khader Adnan wrote from the bed that Israeli soldiers chained him to in the Ramleh prison hospital on 11 February.
“It is time the international community and the UN support prisoners and force the State of Israel to respect international human rights and stop treating prisoners as if they were not humans.” (Ma’an News Agency, “Hunger-striking prisoner not backing down,” 11 February 2012)
As we mark the 65th day of an ongoing hunger strike by Sheikh Khader Adnan, whose struggle has inspired millions and infused the Palestinian national and solidarity movements with new energy, we must reflect on his call to the world and prepare a meaningful international strategy to support Palestinian prisoners’ struggle for freedom, justice, and equality.
Khader Adnan is fighting for rights that should be guaranteed to all prisoners, including due process, fair and equal treatment, and freedom from torture and other coercive methods. Palestinian prisoners from the West Bank face a military justice system that is entirely separate from that for Jewish Israelis, including settlers, who are instead part of the Israeli civil justice system; this military justice system for Palestinian political prisoners includes systematic and arbitrary detention without charge, the acceptance of torture, an almost complete lack of due process, vague charges, very low standards of evidence including the use of secret evidence, and widely disparate and harsher sentencing than the civil justice system.In Israel’s domestic criminal justice system exists a system of apartheid Palestinian citizens of Israel charged with political offenses are deemed ‘security prisoners’ and treated very differently from Jewish citizens. Palestinians are subject to unjust and unequal trials using secret evidence, gag orders, and evidence obtained through torture. (Please see this comprehensive analysis by Addameer for further details.)
As of January 2012, 4,417 Palestinian political prisoners are held in jails in Israel, including 170 children and 6 women. Just like Khader, 310 prisoners are held – without charge or trial – under administrative detention including over 20 lawmakers. In solidarity with them, and to broaden Khader’s struggle, we will actively oppose their imprisonment and any detentions without fair trials.
We demand the immediate release of all Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. They have been targeted by an unfair and unequal legal system. Their imprisonment reflects Israel’s inherent system of injustice and racism. In addition, Israel must immediately halt its practices of:
Administrative detention.
Torture and ill-treatment of detainees.
Solitary confinement and isolation.
The use of military courts in the occupied Palestinian territory that illegally try civilians.
Undermining a fair trial by using secret evidence against the accused.
Arresting vulnerable groups, such as children, disabled, elderly and ill people.
On Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, Tuesday, April 17, we ask that all supporters of the Palestinian political prisoners’ movement bring Khader Adnan’s spirit of resistance to the doorsteps of his captors and would-be killers:
Organize a protest in front of your local Israeli embassy, consulate or mission.
Write letters to protest the violations of rights of Palestinian political prisoners and to call for an intervention to the International Committee of the Red Cross, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and your government or parliamentarians.
Raise awareness on your University campus or in your community about Palestinian political prisoners
Picket and protest G4S, Motorola, the Volvo Group, and the Israeli Medical Association – all providing services to Israel’s prisons – as well as other targets of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which challenges the Israeli policies of occupation, colonization and apartheid these repressive institutions maintain.
Write letters to Palestinian prisoners expressing your support.
We must not allow Khader’s struggle to pass, like so many before his, as one more brave stand crushed by the armed might of the Israeli apartheid regime, unremarkable and inconsequential. Rather let this historic moment mark the beginning of a revitalized global movement for Palestinian prisoners, their rights, their families, and their struggle. Together, we can make it so.
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)– A group of Palestinian worshipers holding a vigil inside the Aqsa Mosque have fended off dozens of fanatic Jewish settlers who tried on Sunday morning to desecrate the Islamic holy site, and clashed with their police escorts.
The Israeli occupation policemen spread extensively throughout the Mosque and attempted to secure the settlers’ provocative entry. Three Israeli armed policemen were injured during the clashes with Palestinian worshipers.
According to news reports, violent confrontations are still ongoing between the Palestinians who attempt to protect the Mosque and the Israeli assailants.
The reports also said that dozens of Jewish settlers and policemen gathered near Al-Maghariba Gate, one of the Mosque’s doors, in an attempt to storm it.
Other Israeli soldiers were seen preventing the Palestinian young men and women under age 45 from entering the Aqsa Mosque to help their brothers under attack.
Several extremist Jewish groups spearheaded by a movement called the temple trustees incited recently their followers to storm the Aqsa Mosque to strengthen what they claimed to be the status of the temple.
In this regard, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum strongly denounced the repeated Jewish attacks on the Aqsa Mosque and the malicious intents to demolish it to establish an alleged temple on its ruins.
He added in a press release that Israel is waging a religious war on the Islamic holy sites in the occupied Palestinian land and this war is supported by the US which is the cause of all pains and sufferings inflicted on the occupied Palestinian people.
Barhoum urged the Muslim nation all over the world to rise and revolt for occupied Jerusalem and the Aqsa Mosque and move to confront the Jewish extremists’ attempts to harm the holy Mosque.
17 February 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
In advance of last week’s regular demonstration in Kufr Qaddoum the Israeli military attempted to prevent it by turning off the electricity supply to the village from 4AM that morning. But it did not deter about 150 Palestinians from the village from marching up the road towards Qadumim. This week, the lights were on, and again the villagers were out in large numbers to make their peaceful protest, with international and Israeli solidarity activists marching alongside them.
Perseverance and resistance in Kufr Qaddoum - Click here for more images
The main focus of the protest is the opening of the road – a direct route that goes through the Qadumim settlement. Since this road was closed to villagers in 2003, they have had to drive or walk much further around the settlement. As well as taking more time and costing more, this road closure may also have caused fatalities – three people have died in ambulances denied permission to take the direct route to hospital in Nablus. There are other issues affecting the village too, including the theft of land by settlers.
Palestinian flags flew in the cold wind as the demonstration made its way through the village towards the line of Israeli soldiers. It was not long before the teargas started with the soldiers shooting it straight at the crowd at chest height. As people ran, several were injured due to being hit by tear gas canisters or from falls – not knowing whether to face the soldiers and watch for the tear gas being shot at them or to turn and run with their backs to it.
Thus began a running battle, with one side armed with tear gas, rubber coated steel bullets and sound bombs and the other merely with their voices and stones from the ground. At one point the soldiers retreated right back to the illegal settlement, and the demonstrators made their way far down the road towards them, burning tyres and flying Palestinian flags. But shouts from lookouts indicated the soldiers were back and there was a sudden rush back into the village as the tear gas started again. This time the Israeli soldiers came right into the village using all the tools at their disposal to disperse the crowd.
At least five people were hit with tear gas canisters or steel coated rubber bullets, including one Israeli solidarity activist.
Afterwards, Murad Shtewi, a member of the organizing committee in Kufr Qaddoum, explained how the whole village is behind this and will not be intimidated by the Israelis.
They have been demonstrating every Friday since July 2011. Since then Israeli forces have raided the village almost every day and night and 11 young men between the ages of 18 and 33 have been arrested – merely for demonstrating.
“But,” he says “we will not stop our demonstrations until we fulfill our goal of opening the road. And we will do more demonstrations if the Israelis try to steal more of our land, as they did last week.”
Veronica is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).
15 February 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
On February 14, 2012, in the small village of Twael of the Aqraba district, southeast of Nablus in the Jordan Valley, the home of the Bunni Jaber family was destroyed by an Israeli backhoe protected by 20 soldiers in four military vehicles. Two men from the family were arrested – Ayman Bunni Jaber, aged 36, and Rafie Bunni Jaber, aged 30. The family’s tractor was also confiscated by the Israeli authorities.
The Bunni Jaber house was located along the green, rocky hills that dominate the landscape here, built from cloth, plastic sheeting, wire mesh, stones, and dirt. There are four children in the Bunni Jaber family, ranging from toddlers to adolescents. The family are herders, with flocks of sheep and goat, and the arbitrary confiscation of their tractor presents a serious challenge for the family’s livelihood.
Click here for more photos - Photos courtesy of Rana Hamadan, 2012
The reason given for the demolition was the house’s construction without a permit in Area C, the part of the West Bank under full Israeli civil and military control. The land belongs to the municipality of Aqraba, and is used for agriculture and herding. Obtaining a construction permit in Area C is a near impossibility for Palestinians. According to the UN agency OCHA, 96 percent of request for building permits in the Jordan Valley between 2000 and 2006 were denied. Nineteen of the 22 houses in the area have received demolition orders, as has the local mosque. Many of these have been demolished, some multiple times after reconstruction by their owners.
By longstanding local custom and law, houses without concrete or foundations like that of the Bunni Jaber family, do not require a building permit. Eighty percent of the land in Aqraba has been confiscated by the Israeli Army under the auspices of its use as “training grounds,” even though land seized is in fact stolen by illegal Israeli settlements. The villagers have resisted through various means, including a one-day hunger strike.
Satu and John are volunteers with International Solidarity Movement (names have been changed).
