Tag: Apartheid Wall - Page 59 - International Solidarity Movement

Israeli forces raid Bil’in, beat Popular Committee member

For Immediate Release:

16 September 2009: Israeli forces raid Bil’in, beat Popular Committee member.

Around 1:30am, the Israeli army invaded Bil’in. Soldiers came to the home of Abdullah Mahmoud Abu Rahme , coordinator of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements, to arrest him.

Abu Rahme was not at home at the time and soldiers proceeded to destroy belongings in his house.

When another member of the Popular Committee, Mohammad Khatib, arrived to check on Abu Rahme’s wife and 3 small children, Israeli forces severely beat him. Khatib was taken to Ramallah hospital for medical treatment.

International solidarity activists were prevented from entering the home and a Palestinian cameraman trying to film the invasion was pushed around and had his camera broken.

Israeli forces destroy the home of Abdullah Abu Rahme

Afterward, soldiers raided the home of Abdullah’s brother, Khaled Abu Rahme, threatening to continue harassment until Abduallah is arrested. The army also trashed a room in Khaled’s home, stealing banners and flags used during weekly demonstrations.

Video footage available upon request, please email palreports@gmail.com

Background:

The recent raids began concurrently with the opening of a legal trial in Montreal. The village of Bil’in has taken two companies registered in Canada (Green Park International & Green Mount International) to court for participating in war crimes by building settlements on Bil’in’s land under the 2000 Canadian Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Statute (which incorporates both the articles of the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute into Canadian federal law).

Since the trail began Israeli forces have arrested 30 people (most of which are under 18). Twenty-one residents of Bil’in remain in Israeli detention.

Through Israel’s interrogation and intimidation tactics, some of arrested youth have falsely ‘confessed’ that the Bil’in Popular Committee urges the demonstrators to throw stones. With such ‘confessions’, Israeli forces then proceed to raid the village at night invade homes and arrest leaders of the non-violent struggle in the community.

Two of the three popular committee members who traveled to Montreal to represent the villages case , Mohammad Khatib and Mohammad Abu Rahme were arrested and have since been released on bail. (see B’Tselem report: http://www.btselem.org/english/separation_barrier/20090818_night_arrests_in_bilin.asp).

Another leading Bil’in non-violent activist, Adeeb Abu Rahme, remains in detention since his arrest during a non-violent demonstration on 10 July 2009 (see report & video: https://palsolidarity.org/2009/07/7652. Adib has been charged with “incitement to damage the security of the area.”

On 29 August 2009, two additional Bil’in houses were simultaneously raided by at least 40 soldiers, arresting Ashraf Al-Khatib (age 29) and Hamru Bornat (age 24). A local cameraman, Haitham Al-Khatib, brother of the arrested Hamru, was repeatedly forcibly moved and hit, and threatened with arrest unless he stopped filming. Soldiers declared his home a “closed military zone” but could not produce any military order.

The Palestinian village of Bil’in has become an international symbol of the Palestinian popular struggle. For almost 5 years, its residents have been continuously struggling against the de facto annexation of more than 50% of their farmlands, confiscated for the construction of the Apartheid Wall.

In a celebrated decision, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled on the 4 September 2007 that the current route of the wall in Bil’in was illegal and needs to be dismantled; the ruling however has not been implemented. The struggle of the village to liberate its lands and stop the illegal settlements has been internationally recognized and has earned the popular committee in Bil’in the Carl von Ossietzky Meda award.

Oakland man to sue for injury in Israel protest

Bob Egelko | The San Francisco Chronicle

14 September 2009

An Oakland man who was seriously wounded by a tear gas projectile fired by Israeli police during a West Bank protest will file suit despite a military report concluding that he was engaged in an “act of war,” his lawyers said Sunday.

The case of Tristan Anderson, who remains hospitalized with brain damage and a fractured skull six months after he was injured, may test Israel’s efforts to shield itself from lawsuits for harm it causes during wartime, said attorney Michael Sfard.

Anderson’s lawyers said Israel’s Ministry of Defense has told them the demonstrators threw stones and other objects at police, who acted in self-defense.

The Ministry of Defense, Sfard said in an e-mail message, “is trying to apply the (act of war) doctrine to every (case of) damage caused in the occupied Palestinian territories by Israeli forces.”

Anderson, 38, was among a group of about 400 Palestinian and international demonstrators who gathered March 13 in the town of Naalin, near the wall Israel is building along its border to keep Palestinians out.

The wall cuts off parts of the West Bank, including a portion of Naalin, and is the site of frequent protests.

Anderson was struck in the head by a tear gas canister fired from about 65 yards away by a border police officer, according to some fellow demonstrators. He had brain surgery at Tel Hashomer hospital in Tel Aviv and is no longer in critical condition, but is blind in his right eye, friends say.

His parents, Nancy and Michael Anderson of Grass Valley (Nevada County), report that he has regained consciousness and they are optimistic about his recovery, said Lea Tsemel, an Israeli civil rights lawyer who represents the family.

However, she said she believes Tristan Anderson will be permanently disabled.

Before going to Israel, Anderson was one of the tree-sitters who until last September occupied a grove next to UC Berkeley’s Memorial Stadium in an unsuccessful bid to stop the university from clearing the trees to make room for an athletic center.

This summer, Anderson’s lawyers received a letter from Israel’s Ministry of Defense saying its preliminary investigation had cleared government forces of wrongdoing.

“The border police force was attacked massively by about 400 demonstrators who threw blocks, stones and gas rockets,” the letter said, according to Tsemel’s translation. “The police sincerely feared that they would be hurt. … In these circumstances, we are talking about an act of war. Accordingly, the state is not responsible for any damages.”

Tsemel said numerous witnesses contradict the ministry’s report.

“He was demonstrating. He didn’t have any weapon. He was a peacenik. … Nothing was endangering the soldiers,” the attorney said in a telephone interview from her home in Israel.

While some demonstrators have thrown stones at soldiers, Tsemel said, there was no evidence of any violent activity by Anderson.

Sfard, who also represents Anderson, said the Ministry of Defense was trying to extend the “act of war” defense from armed conflicts to police responses against civilian demonstrators.

Tsemel said Anderson and his family would file suit shortly in either Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. In addition to compensation, she said, “we want the army to investigate the event and bring to trial the border police person who shot at him and those who gave him the orders.”

Bil’in raided in the night

12 September 2009

Shortly after 2am, the Israeli occupation forces invaded the village of Bil’in from two different directions once again. They raided two houses in an attempt to arrest Mohammed Ahmed Yasseen (age 21), and Yasseen Mohammed Yasseen (age 21). In the first house soldiers were quite aggressive during their operation. Neither of the wanted men was home at the time.

At the second house, the soldiers, disguised with face masks as usual, met a lot of resistance from Palestinian and international activists who were standing in their way and filming the event. As they did not find their victim, they eventually retreated to the four waiting Jeeps, arresting one international activist from Great Britain on their way. Yet, according to their conversation in Hebrew, they planned to release him a little further on their way toward the Apartheid Wall. He was indeed released a few minutes later before they exited through the Wall.

This has been the second night raid this week. It seems that the Israeli forces are stepping up their night raids again in Bil’in.

Two injured and dozens suffered teargas inhalation during the weekly protest in Bil’in

Bil’in Popular Committee

11 September 2009

Two injured and dozens were suffocated in Bil’in due to tear gas which was thrown at them by the Israeli soldiers, during their participation in the weekly demonstration against the construction of the wall and settlements. The two: Ashraf Abu Rahmah and Khamees Abu Rahmah. As Bil’in citizens participated in a demonstration after Friday prayers, with a group of international peace activists and Israeli peace movements members, the demonstrators raised up the Palestinian flags and banners calling for an end the incursions, night raids and arrests, and calling for the release of all detainees, and to stop building settlement and the confiscations of Palestinian lands.

The demonstrators walked in the village streets’, chanting national slogans condemning the occupation polices, and when the demonstrators approached the gate of the wall which they tried to open, the Israeli soldiers sprayed them with gas and sound bombs, causing tow injured and dozens of suffocation cases.

On the other hand, a delegation from the German and Swedish diplomats visited the village yesterday as they have listened to an explanation from the Popular Committee in Bil’in on the experience of their resistance to the wall. Subsequently they have toured to the wall thus they saw the negative effects caused by the wall on the villagers. Although they have seen the yards around the wall full of empty sound and gas bombs, which were used to suppress the demonstrators.

At another level, the Popular Committee condemned the Israeli government decisions relating to increasing housing units in settlements and land confiscation. As the popular committee called the International organizations to move quickly to stop such schemes, and called for boycotting punishment procedures against Israel. Although at the official level the committee has asked the PA for an Arabic and International action, in order to stop such occupation schemes. While at the popular level, the committee has invited the citizens to get out into the streets in popular protest marches and demonstrations with participation of international and Israeli peace movements to defend their land.

Palestine’s peaceful struggle

Mohammed Khatib | The Nation

11 September 2009

A few weeks ago, in the dead of night, dozens of Israeli soldiers with painted faces burst violently into my home. If only they had knocked, I would have opened the door. They arrested me. My wife, Lamia, was left alone with our four children. My youngest, 3-year-old Khaled, woke up to the image of Israeli soldiers with painted faces who were taking his father away. He has not stopped crying since. A few nights ago he woke up in terror, sobbing: “Daddy, why did you let the soldiers take me?” That’s the way our children sleep–in a constant state of fear.

Many Americans know that the Obama administration has been pushing the Israeli government to accept a freeze on settlement construction. What is not commonly known is that even as Israel negotiates with the United States, it has been taking steps, including my arrest, to crush the growing Palestinian nonviolent movement opposing Israel’s construction of settlements and the wall on Palestinian land in the West Bank.

For over five years the residents of Bil’in and other villages have been protesting against Israel’s separation wall, which cuts off our village’s land for the sake of Israeli settlement expansion. We have even taken the struggle to the courts. The International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled in July 2004 that the wall, where it has been built inside the West Bank, is illegal under international law, as are all Israeli settlements. In September 2007, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the wall in Bil’in, which separates us from 50 percent of our land, is illegal according to Israeli law. The wall has yet to have moved.

The Israeli army is using more-lethal weapons and greater violence against protesters, and arresting many people, including many protest organizers. In Bil’in alone, twenty-nine residents have been arrested in the past three months. Twelve of them are children. Almost all were arrested during military raids in the middle of the night. Their detention has been extended repeatedly.

But the charges against them are baseless. As one example, I have been charged with stone throwing. I was released on bail with draconian terms only after my lawyers showed the court passport stamps proving that I was abroad at the time of the alleged offense. My friend, Adeeb Abu-Rahme, 37 years old and the father of nine, has been imprisoned for more than six weeks, though the charges against him are just as absurd.

Every Friday in Bil’in, we march to the wall in peaceful protest, along with our Israeli and international partners. Once a year we hold an international conference about the popular nonviolent struggle. Together we learn and gain inspiration. We struggle together to bring down the many walls between people that the occupation is creating. We’ve repeatedly addressed the Israeli soldiers here, telling them we are not against them as people, but that we oppose their actions as an occupying military force.

Still, nineteen demonstrators have been killed by the Israeli army in these nonviolent demonstrations against the wall. Many have been injured, including Israeli and international activists protesting with us. Here in Bil’in we recently lost our friend Bassem Abu Rahme, who was fatally shot by soldiers in April while he was imploring them to stop shooting at demonstrators.

Several months ago we were warned by Israel’s occupation forces that they intended to crush the popular struggle.

Why has the Israeli government decided now to increase the suppression of demonstrations and to break the spirit of protest leaders? Maybe because they realize that the nonviolent struggle is spreading, that more and more villages have created popular committees that are organizing demonstrations. Perhaps the crackdown is a result of their concern and the growing international movement for the boycott of companies and businessmen such as Lev Leviev who are involved in Israel’s land grab. Or maybe they fear that the new American government could learn through our demonstrations that Israel’s wall is a means to annex land for the growing settlements, and that nonviolent Palestinian protests are being brutally suppressed.

Israel’s actions suggest that it is intimidated by people struggling for their rights in a nonviolent manner. The Israeli government seems to believe that Palestinians who struggle while partnering with Israeli activists endanger Israel’s occupation and that tearing down human walls is a dangerous act. Perhaps what the state of Israel fears most of all is the hope that people can live together based on justice and equality for all.