Tag: YNet

Left-wing activists evacuated from tent built opposite outpost

Anat Shalev | YNet News

6 June 2009

IDF troops forcibly removed dozens of left-wing and Palestinian activists who were trying to erect a tent in South Mt. Hebron with a Palestinian family claiming ownership of the land. The family says that it owns the land near the Susya settlement on which an illegal outpost has been built. Settlers called the outpost Givat Hadegel.

The activists, members of Combatants for Peace, were successful in erecting their tent but were removed from the area a short time later by IDF troops alerted to the scene. A confrontation ensued between the two sides, culminating in the dismantling of the tent. The outpost still stands.

Ofra Ben Porat, a member of Combatants for Peace: “We came here in cooperation with Palestinian residents of Susya to protest the establishment of the outpost called Givat Hadegel, near Susya. This is a specific example of the reality in South Mt. Hebron. Week after week the settlers steal more and more lands, suffocating the Palestinians and their livelihoods, restricting their movement to the absurd point where their flocks can’t graze in the pastures they own. We came to the hill where the outpost was built and decided to build a tent on the Palestinians’ territory to assert their presence.”

Ben Porat accused the military of declaring areas claimed by the settlers as closed military zones and blocking entry to left-wing activists and Palestinians.

“The soldiers cleared us, 200 people, aggressively. There’s no law, everything is done according to the soldiers’ will. We know that even filing a complaint with the police won’t accomplish anything. When Peace Now turned to the military about this outpost, they were told that this outpost isn’t recognized. The policy is deliberately fuzzy, the soldiers set the policies and there’s complete lawlessness when it comes to the Palestinians,” she said.

The IDF has yet to respond to the protestors claims.

‘IDF troops were never at risk in Naalin’

Ali Waked | YNet News

6 June 2009

Palestinian sources told Ynet Saturday that contrary to an IDF statement, the man killed during a Friday clash between Palestinian demonstrators and IDF forces in the town of Naalin, near the West Bank city of Ramallah, posed no danger whatsoever to the troops.

Akal Srur was killed by Border Guard fire during the riot. A subsequent military inquiry said that Srur, a known Hamas operative, attacked soldiers as part of a large group.

Nevertheless, a Ni’lin resident, who said he was standing by Srur when he was shot, told Ynet that the soldier who shot Srur was in no danger: “The soldier was to our right and Akal was running to the left to help an injured man… when he was shot in the heart.”

The resident also negated the IDF’s claims that veiled men were present at the rally: “It’s possible that some people covered their faced because of the tear gas, but there were no such men in Friday’s rally.”

According to security sources, some 200 Palestinians, peace activists and left-wing activists took part in the anti-security fence protest and it turned into a violent riot shortly after it began.

The IDF maintains that the protestors were hurling rocks at the troops and trying to damage the fence. The military further said that several soldiers were attacked by a group of men, some of them masked and that the soldiers used crowd control measures, which apparently contributed to Srur’s death.

The investigation into the course of the incident is still ongoing.

Fayyad calls for end to land expropriation

Ali Waked | Ynet News

8 May 2009

Palestinian prime minister attends Friday prayer in east Jerusalem, promises residents to thwart Netanyahu government’s plan to confiscate property in Abu Dis area.

Battle over east Jerusalem lands heating up: Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on Friday took part in a prayer held on disputed lands in the Abu Dis area, where protest tents have been set up following the Israeli demand to expropriate lands.

Fayyad participated in the prayer held by Kadi Taysir Tamami, head of the Palestinian Authority’s Sharia courts, near Area E1, which is the focus of a dispute between the Palestinians and Israel, which seeks to build the community of Keidar and connect between Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim. Hundreds of Jerusalem residents attended the prayer.

The Palestinian prime minister stated that “the PA will not agree to all the Israeli plans”, and promised that they would not succeed.

Talking to Ynet, Fayyad’s advisor for Jerusalem affairs, Khatem Abdel Kader, said that the prime minister’s arrival at the area served as a message to Israel that the PA would fight the expropriation plans.

“This is also a message to the international community, that it must work to implement the principle that these are Palestinian lands which will be an inseparable part of the Palestinian state,” Abdel Kader added.

“And it is also a message to the Palestinian people, that the PA will not abandon them in the face of the plans that (Interior Minister) Eli Yishai and his friends are working to implement.”

Apart from the area near the community of Abu Dis, PA officials have also expressed their fear this week that Israel plans to confiscate dozens of acres including dozens of buildings with some 1,000 residents near the neighborhood of al-Bustan, next to Silwan, as part of what they referred to as “an extensive expropriation campaign”.

YNet: Relatives: Bilin protester was persistent in his struggle

Ali Waked | Ynet

19 April 2009

Medical inquiry confirms Bassem Abu Rahma died after being hit by gas grenade fired from tear gas canister. IDF claims demonstrators rioted in West Bank village, but protestor’s relative says ‘there was no violence or provocation on our part’

The family of 30-year-old Bassem Ibrahim Abu Rahma, who was killed Friday by a tear gas grenade in a demonstration against the separation fence near Bilin, was comforted Saturday at its home in the West Bank village by many friends and relatives.

Bassem’s relative, Abdullah Abu Rahma, told Ynet that there was no provocation on the part of the protestors during the rally.

The Israel Defense Forces is still investigating the circumstances of the incident, which has been defined by the army as a riot. Military representatives met over the weekend with Palestinian medical representatives in a meeting brokered by the Civil Administration, in order to conduct a joint medical inquiry, which confirmed that Abu Rahma was killed by an object which hit his chest, and not by a bullet.

A video filmed at the scene of the incident shows the protesters approaching the fence, including Bassem Abu Rahma, who is seen wearing a yellow shirt.

Abdullah was near Bassem when he was hurt. “I can say for certain that there was no violence or provocation on the part of the protestors,” he says. “The casualty’s last words were to the soldiers and police officers: ‘Stop firing, stop firing.’ And then the grenade hit him and he was critically injured.”

‘He died in my hands’

In his version of the incident, Abdullah says that as there was no close ambulance, he carried Bassem himself into the car with the help of other residents.

“We rushed to a hospital in Ramallah, but Bassem died between my hands,” he says. “It was a very difficult sight, and the family received the news with great pain. Bassem was known as a simple man, everyone’s friend, a person who was loved by all of the village’s residents, all the families and the residents of nearby villages, because of his integrity, plainness and his persistence in the struggle for his land.”

He adds that Bassem was the youngest of five brothers and that he also had a sister. “It’s a simple family, a poor family which suffered a lot of pain after part of its land was robbed, and was always involved in the non-violent struggle to return the lands,” he says.

“Those who came to the house came to grieve the fatal casualty and console, but also to show their appreciation for the family, which has suffered directly for a second time.”

This is not the first time the Abu Rahma family makes headlines under unfortunate circumstances: Bassem’s brother, Ashraf, was one of the most famous victims of the Palestinian struggle against the separation fence, when an IDF soldier was filmed shooting him while he was bound, after being arrested while trying to transfer foods and medications to residents of the nearby village of Naalin, which was under curfew. The shooting soldier was accused of inappropriate behavior, and the regiment commander who was present during the incident was moved to a different post.

‘Struggle non-violent – and Israel is losing’

Abdullah claims that the increasing incidents of firing on demonstrators in recent weeks, and the growing number of protestors injured and killed in anti-fence rallies, show that the Israelis don’t know how to handle the non-violent protests.

“When the struggle is armed, the Israelis like it,” he says. “They know that with their weapon, with one aircraft, one bombing, they can handle the struggle. But when the struggle is non-violent, and when peace activists from Israel and the entire world are taking part in the demonstrations, it’s harder to conceal the truth, to hide the robbery and violence.

“We’re noticing that they’re losing their senses, and this why, over time, they run wilder and become more violent.”

According to Abdullah, “We know that what worries the Israelis more is that this style of a non-violent struggle might spread from Bilin, Naalin and other numbered centers and become a wide model. So they are seeking to suppress this model before it spreads even more, because they know our struggle is justified and that they are losing.

“Moreover, Bassem was killed when we were trying to enter land which an Israeli court ruled we are allowed to enter.”

Ynet: “Look who’s been kidnapped”

Hundreds of Palestinian ‘suspects’ have been kidnapped from their homes and will never stand trial

Israeli reservist Arik Diamant | Ynet

It’s the wee hours of the morning, still dark outside. A guerrilla force comes out of nowhere to kidnap a soldier. After hours of careful movement, the force reaches its target, and the ambush is on! In seconds, the soldier finds himself looking down the barrel of a rifle.

A smash in the face with the butt of the gun and the soldier falls to the ground, bleeding. The kidnappers pick him up, quickly tie his hands and blindfold him, and disappear into the night.

This might be the end of the kidnapping, but the nightmare has just begun. The soldier’s mother collapses, his father prays. His commanding officers promise to do everything they can to get him back, his comrades swear revenge. An entire nation is up-in-arms, writing in pain and worry.

Nobody knows how the soldier is: Is he hurt? Do his captors give him even a minimum of human decency, or are they torturing him to death by trampling his honor? The worst sort of suffering is not knowing. Will he come home? And if so, when? And in what condition? Can anyone remain apathetic in the light of such drama?

Israeli terror

This description, you’ll be surprised to know, has nothing to do with the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit. It is the story of an arrest I carried out as an IDF soldier, in the Nablus casbah, about 10 years ago. The “soldier” was a 17-year-old boy, and we kidnapped him because he knew “someone” who had done “something.”

We brought him tied up, with a burlap sac over his head, to a Shin Bet interrogation center known as “Scream Hill” (at the time we thought it was funny). There, the prisoner was beaten, violently shaken and sleep deprived for weeks or months. Who knows.

No one wrote about it in the paper. European diplomats were not called to help him. After all, there was nothing out of the ordinary about the kidnapping of this Palestinian kid. Over the 40 years of occupation we have kidnapped thousands of people, exactly like Gilad Shalit was captured: Threatened by a gun, beaten mercilessly, with no judge or jury, or witnesses, and without providing the family with any information about the captive.

When the Palestinians do this, we call it “terror.” When we do it, we work overtime to whitewash the atrocity.

Suspects?

Some people will say: The IDF doesn’t “just” kidnap. These people are “suspects.” There is no more perverse lie than this. In all the years I served, I reached one simple conclusion: What makes a “suspect”? Who, exactly suspects him, and of what?

Who has the right to sentence a 17-year-old to kidnapping, torture and possible death? A 26-year-old Shin Bet interrogator? A 46-year-old one? Do these people have any higher education, apart from the ability to interrogate? What are his considerations? I all these “suspects” are so guilty, why not bring them to trial?

Anyone who believes that despite the lack of transparency, the IDF and Shin Bet to their best to minimize violations of human rights is naïve, if not brainwashed. One need only read the testimonies of soldiers who have carried out administrative detentions to be convinced of the depth of the immorality of our actions in the territories.

To this very day, there are hundreds of prisoners rotting in Shin Bet prisons and dungeons, people who have never been –and never will be – tried. And Israelis are silently resolved to this phenomenon.

Israeli responsibility

The day Gilad Shalit was kidnapped I rode in a taxi. The driver told me we must go into Gaza, start shooting people one-by-one, until someone breaks and returns the hostage. It isn’t clear that such an operation would bring Gilad back alive.

Instead of getting dragged into terrorist responses… we should release some of the soldiers and civilians we have kidnapped. This is appropriate, right, and could bring about an air of reconciliation in the territories.

Hell, if this is what will bring Gilad home safe-and-sound, we have a responsibility to him to do it.

Arik Diamant is an IDF reservist and the head of Courage to Refuse.