commentary from Israel & the West Bank
Villages, Walls, Non-violent Resistance and Video Cameras.
May 24th
Another weekend of actions against the occupation and the wall took place throughout the West Bank. Here are the videos and the reports. So many villages, so many actions and the weather is getting warmer.
al-Walaja
About 20 Israelis and internationals joined a few dozen Palestinians for a demonstration in Walaje against the wall that is going to enclose the village and turn it into an enclave/open air prison. After a brief march speeches were held in Hebrew, English and Arabic. The army didn’t approach the demo. Then we went to the protest tent set up on the village’s lands that are to be confiscated for constructing the wall, where the local elders gave the visitors a first hand account of the history of the village since the 1948 war. The organizers reported that that the legal case against the local section of the wall is to be repoened on July 25, but the authorities are not freezing the construction. The local organizers are therefore trying to bring the legal proceedings forward, and invite activists to join the villagers on Sunday 9:00 to resist the bulldozers.
Beit Jala
al-Ma’asara
In al-Ma’asara village, around 120 Palestinian, international and Israeli demonstrators participated in a pacifist march promoting the boycott on settlement produce and protesting the prospective construction of the wall, which upon completion will annex 350 hectares of the Palestinian land of the area. The Israeli soldiers blocked the main roadway of the village through which the demonstration advanced and in response the demonstrators decided to sit down on the road. Two young Palestinian men were arrested violently while they were seated on the ground with their hands up in front of the soldiers. The soldiers then began firing sound grenades, tear gas, and rubber bullet at the crowd; one young man was hospitalized with a serious head injury caused by a gas canister.
In addition, Amitai Sandy has a lovely write up of his experience in al-Ma’asara.
How I missed a birth of a goat
Here’s a short report from the demo in the village of Maasra, east of Efrata settelment. The demos in this village are usually much quieter, as the people of this village are much calmer. They don’t throw stones AT ALL. And yet, today, when we marched to the village’s entrance, and met with the soldiers, they had their plan ready in advance.
They told us to get off the main road – we did exactly what they said. No violence, no stone throwing, no nonsense. The demonstrators decided to sit down on the road leading into the village, not blocking the main road AT ALL. So then we hear the commander tell his soldiers: “they’re gonna start throwing stones now, so you better start shooting gas”. They did. Direct shooting, no arcs.
All of us ran into the village, but that wasn’t enough for the soldiers. After arresting two Palestinians, they chased us into the village and continued shooting tear gas canisters, though non of us threatened them in any way, no stone throwing, no nothing.
We were just running away from the tear gas canisters. The tear gas is no fun, but the effect wears off after a few minutes.
But when shot directly, those canisters are as lethal as live ammo. Hassan, one of the demo’s organizers, was shot in the head with a tear gas canister. He’s in hospital now.
If I was a beliver, I’d pray for his health. As an atheist, all I have left is hope. I met his and his brother’s kids today. They are so cute and smart. I climbed a mulberry tree with them today, and we ate the berries together. Their neighbor’s goat gave birth while we waited for news from the hospital.
Shooting Tear Gas Directly at Protesters in Nabi Salih-Video
May 22nd
Video from Friday’s demo in the West Bank village of Nabi Salih. In this video, the IDF is clearly breaking its own protocol by firing tear gas projectiles directly at Palestinian and Israeli protesters. The final portion of the video explores some of the lasting effects of the IDF’s continued attacks on the village as a result of weekly demonstrations that the village is holding in protest of the occupation and the confiscation of their agricultural well by settlers from Halamish. For a more detailed description visit Promised Land and read Noam’s first hand account of the day.
This is the film-makers description:
Today, the villagers of Nabi Salah suffered another severe visitation of Israeli Occupation Forces violence where one protestor, Kamal al-Rimawi, was hit in the face with a tear gas projectile breaking one of his facial bones and some teeth necessitating his hospitalization in Rafidia Hospital, Nablus, where he is presently recovering. Village houses were commandeered and tear gas projectiles were fired through the windows into three causing fire damage to the curtains, scorch marks to the walls and in the one house which I filmed – the home of Abu Shawki – the glass in a display case shattered, the other houses were the homes of Abu Husam and Abu Taher. The Friday protests are ongoing and Nabi Saleh’s coordinators are appealing to Israelis and internationals of live conscience for maximum solidarity and to attend this Friday’s demonstration (after prayers) where their presence may attenuate the wanton violence of the IOF and the settlers from the nearby illegal colony of Halamish which they “defend”.
Journalist Arrested During the Weekly Protest in Bil’in
May 22nd
During the weekly protest against the wall yesterday in the West Bank village of Bil’in, film maker Yisrael Putermam was arrested. Many of the videos posted on this website are Yisrael’s. His tireless commitment to documenting the struggle against the occupation in the West Bank is truly respectable. He was arrested and released the same day, although I am told that he will have a court hearing in the coming days. Below is his footage from the day before his arrest.
UPDATE:
Video from Friday’s protest in the West Bank village of Nil’in. Filmed by David Reeb
Settlers Throw Stones and the Army Arrests Children- Video from Hebron 15 May 2010
May 19th
Below is video from the (now) weekly peace march to Open Shuhada Street in Hebron. While the video is not subtitled, one can get the feeling of the atmosphere during these marches and the behaviour of the IDF and the settlers.
What you see here is nothing short of breath taking… the settlers, in plain view, throw stones onto the peaceful protesters. The army responds by trying to arrest Palestinian children. The fiction of Kafka comes again to mind yet even Kafka could not think of something so bizarre. Hebron is a city without rules. It is the wild west of Israel and, in a profound way, the face of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.
New Video of the Police Brutality in Sheikh Jarrah 14 May 2010
May 17th
Police brutality was used against protestors at SJ on May 14th 2010, Unnecessary force was exceeded to accomplish an unlawful political decission, by preventing entry to the area of the confiscated homes of the palestinian families. 14 arrested and brought to court after 32 hours, at the next night. Four were wounded with broken bones.
UPDATE:
The aftermath on Saturday Night
A Sheikh Jarrah Activist Speaks Truth to Power with Avi Cohen
May 16th
Below is an account of a conversation between an active Sheikh Jarrah activist and Avi Cohen, the head of the Shalem Police located in East Jerusalem. The conversation touches on many recent issues in Sheikh Jarrah including the police decision to serve the settlers on Jerusalem Day by allowing them to march in Sheikh Jarrah… something they have never let left demonstrations do:
On Saturday I went to a Nakba demo in East Jerusalem organized by Balad. The march started at the American Embassy and continued to SJ. When I arrived, Avi Cohen the head of the Shalem Police Station (located in East Jerusalem) called me and said “ ***, I arrest you and you shout insults at me in demonstrations, but thats no reason to not say good-morning”. I said good morning and was hoping to escape this event when he continued to ask me why the people who were arrested at SJ on Friday did not sign an agreement to stay away from SJ for two weeks and went home. I told him that its against our moral outlook and that we make decisions looking at the bigger picture. I told him that by allowing settlers to “celebrate” Jerusalem day in SJ (where we were never allowed to demonstrate), it has become obvious that the police is serving the settlers, and is selective and operating out of racist ideology in how they enforce the law. At this point I left and joined the demo.
Avi Cohen (Bald) Refusing Flowers from a SJ Protester
Latter when we arrived to the SJ garden (where we hold our weekly protests) I set aside with Salah. Avi Cohen came into the area and asked me why we don’t organize demo’s like the one we were present at, “peaceful and organized with people who monitor and make sure that things don’t get out of hand. You are a citizen, why don’t you respect the law?” I replied by saying that the laws that he protects are racist, and that he protects an apartheid system. That even with laws that are not discriminative, he makes the choices on how to enforce them, which is why so many Palestinian and Leftists are arrested while almost none of the settlers are ever detained although they break the law daily. He said that that is not true and invited me to come to his office at the police station and talk. I informed him that we are not friends, and that im not going to come and talk to him. He answered that we don’t need to be friends in order to sit down and talk to one another. At this point many Palestinians who noticed the event came and started shouting at him accusing him (rightly) of trying to make me into collaborator.
If someone was to come and tell me a couple of months ago that Avi Cohen would one day come and invite me to his office to talk, I would have started laughing. Cohen a couple of months ago was heard saying that “SJ will not become Bilin” and enforced a very violent rules and tactics against us. He can be heard in a video after a recent demo saying “ I want arrests! They fucked us over!”. This change of attitude I cannot explain.
Demonstration in Sheikh Jarrah, 26/3/2010
This is Occupation- A Video Report from An Nabi Salih
May 15th
The cycle continues….week in and week out. Children.. young boys no more than sixteen or seventeen years old throw stones and rocks at invading IDF soldiers in the village of An Nabi Salih. The youth (Shabab in Arabic) create a road block of sorts at the entrance to the village. The IDF responds with tear gas and bullets, some rubber and some live. It is a dance of sorts. The children throw stones, they try to stop the army jeeps from entering the village. They try to hit the soldiers. The soldiers respond by firing weapons directly at them. Eventually the village is covered in tear gas. Collective punishment for the weekly demonstrations. No one can escape the blanket of tear gas….woman, children, old people. The occupier reminds the occupied who is master and who is in control. The white intifada is well under way and the resistance in An Nabi Salih as well as other villages only grows week after week.
The following is a report from Anarchists Against the Wall about the demostration in An Nabi Salih on 14 May 2010:
Around 50 Nabi Saleh residents, other Palestinians and international and Israeli supporters participated in this week’s demonstration against the strangulating occupation and the Halamish settlement. This time the peaceful march was not attacked at first by the Israeli army. Protesters scattered around the main road that crosses Nabi Saleh, while the army was waiting on the road close to the settlement and the village’s hill top that leads to the spring nearby. Soon enough clashes erupted, and the army’s tear gas grenades set fire throughout the area. Tear gas and sound grenades were also thrown on and around houses that are located on the village’s hill top.
Around 15:00 the army entered the main road and fired tear gas to more populated village’s areas. During that time, 2 Israeli protesters were apprehended and detained by soldiers, one of them dragged on the road. The army retreated then. It turned out the protester who was dragged was also beaten in the car while in custody, and had her head bleeding. The protesters were released around 19:00 while clashes were still taking place.
A bit earlier on soldiers came out of one of the army’s jeeps with tied assault dogs, storming on the retreating protesters. None were apprehended, and the army went back to his traditional and mostly human-exploitive weapons of tear gas and rubber-coated metal bullets.
Below is shocking footage of IDF soldiers beating an Israeli protester in Nabi Salih on the same day as the above video
The Struggle in Sheikh Jarrah Continues
May 15th
Yesterday, Jerusalem Police arrested fourteen protesters during the weekly protest in the contested East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah. Over 350 Israeli protesters gathered for the weekly event that has been taking place since last summer. In recent months, the protest has been quiet in terms of arrests and many “celebrities” of the Israeli left have been paying visits of support including the author David Grossman, former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg and other intellectuals. Hopefully yesterday’s action will give the struggle in Sheikh Jarrah renewed life and the protests will once again occupy space in the Friday headlines.
Did Settlers from Shilo Kill a Sixteen Year Old Palestinian Last Night?
May 14th
Settlers from the extremist settlement of Shilo near Ramallah might have shot killed a 16 year old Palestinian child yesterday evening. Below is a report from the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee:
Aysar alZaben’s body was found in his plot by family members only hours after he was shot. He was found lying dead on the ground, face down, with a bullet hole in his back after being missing since the evening.
According to initial information, alZaben was shot by a settler when tending in his lands between 4:30 and 6:00 pm. At the time, a group of youth from the village scuffled with a settler near the adjacent Route 60. According to the testimonies of some of these youth, they were throwing stones towards Route 60, near a roadblock preventing Palestinian access to the road. At some point, a settler stopped his car and exited it, beginning to shoot live ammunition towards them, which caused them to run away back to the village. Escaping the shots, they were not aware that alZaben, who wasn’t with them and did not participate in the stone throwing, was hit.
As hours passed and alZaben did not return home, his family began looking for him. Having heard the shots earlier in the day, they began calling the Israeli Army, police and Civil Administration trying to locate him, thinking he may have been detained. Eventually, they set out to look for him in their fields, where they knew he had worked in the afternoon. According to his uncle, his lifeless body was found lying face down on the ground with a bullet hole in his back.
Mazra’a alSharqia is an agrarian village of about 5,000, located 15 kilometers Northeast of Ramallah. Despite the village’s location next to Route 60, which runs across the West Bank from north to south and was, in part, built on the Mazra’a's lands, residents have no access to the road, as all the paths leading to and from it have been blocked by Israel.
After being disconnected from Route 60 in recent years, the only road from the area’s villages to Ramallah is a dangerous old agrarian road, which due to the mountainous terrain is often flooded in winters, completely disconnecting the region from the rest of the world.
Last Tuesday, a group of settlers from a nearby settlement have amassed in the Mazra’a alSharqia’s lands and attempted to enter the village after the Israeli government announced it will demolish illegal houses in a number of West Bank Jewish-only settlements. Residents, who suspected the settlers intend on holding a “price-tag” action in the village, confronted them, and manged to ward off the invasion.
They were then attacked by a force of soldiers who shot dozens of rounds of live ammunition and eventually also invaded the village.
The Weekly Non Violent Protests Across the West Bank 28-5-2010
May 29th
Posted by Joseph Dana in Unarmed Resistance
3 comments
In Nabi Salah, soldiers entered the village before the demonstration started. following this, confrontations ensued between the village youth and soldiers and border police officers that lasted till eight in the evening. the border police flooded the village streets with tear gas fired by a jeep-top launcher. two youths were injured, one was hit by a tear gas canister. both were evacuated to hospital.
The weekly demonstration in Ni’lin marked two years to the start of the village’s struggle against the theft of its land by the wall. the protesters marched carrying banners commemorating the five protesters killed by the army in the last two years, and the village’s prisoners who are incarcerated by israel for their participation in the demonstrations. the protest march reached the wall, and protested for a few minutes by the closed steel gate. Tear gas fired by the army forced the protesters to move along the route of the wall, where some of them threw stones at the soldiers. The protest ended within a couple of hours with no injuries recorded.
Al Ma’asara
“If you want to see the human rights violations in Palestine, you can come and see it…”
Sheikh Jarrah
The Israeli government has announced eviction orders for two more families in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah. They have 45 days to leave their house and make way for more Jewish settlers. Haaretz broke the story yesterday.