Posts tagged Safa
Another Day in the West Bank: Upsetting Video from Safa
Jun 14th
Safa is a village next to the extremist settlement of Bat Ayin. Ta’ayush and other peace organatizaions have recently been spending time with the framers of Safa, helping them work their lands. The settlers of the settlement have increased their violent presence and two weeks ago settlers attacked members of Ta’ayush and flipped the car of Ezra. Yesterday, members of Anarchists Against the Wall and the Palestine Solidarity Project were on the ground again protecting farmers. What followed was yet another instance of excessive force and violence of the IDF on behalf of the settlers.
Violence in the farmlands of Safa
May 30th
I am getting a report now from Jesse of Ta’ayush who is in Safa. For information on Safa see this post. Ta’ayush was on the ground with Palestinians farmers when 15 to 20 young settlers arrived from the settlement of Bat Ayin. He tells me that the settlers starting throwing rocks at the Ta’ayush activists and the Palestinians. There were at least three IDF soldiers watching this happen from the hilltop road. The settlers got closer and broke the camera of one activist and began to flip the car of Ezra Nawi breaking his windshield. Approximately thirty border police arrived on the scene and declared the zone closed. The settlers were not required to leave the area and five Ta’ayush activists were arrested as they were helping Ezra to flip his car back over. He tells me that more Palestinians are arriving to help Ezra with his car.

Ezra's car after the settlers flipped it
UPDATE:
Ynet is covering the situation like this:
Leftists and Palestinians clashed with settlers near the Bat Ayin settlement on Saturday. Police detained two Palestinians suspected of throwing stones and three Palestinians and two leftists for entering a closed military zone.
The leftists claimed that the settlers damaged one of their vehicles. (Efrat Weiss)
It is a bald faced lie and I thought I would let everyone that reads this blog know about it.
UPDATE:
Haaretz is now covering the story here.
I am told that we have video that will be used on Channel two this evening.
UPDATE:
Members of Ta’ayush that were not arrested are now at the kiyrat arba police station filling a complaint about the stolen camera and the flipped car. They are reporting to me that settlers children are throwing eggs and other projectiles at them while they are inside the police station.
More UPDATES:
I have got a copy of some video with footage of the arrests made by the IDF. You be the judge if they were to violent with the peace activists. Right now we do not have footage of the settler attacks because they destroyed our cameras.
UPDATE:
For those that do not speak Hebrew, Ta’ayush members are telling the army that they are on the way out. “we are leaving’ ‘we are on the way out of here’. The army is not speaking, only removing the activists with force.
Three Israelis have been released from jail because they have agreed not to return to the south West Bank for 15 days. There are still two Israelis in jail waiting for a hearing that will most likely take place this evening. Contact you members of Knesset and protest this injustice. There are also two Palestinian children aged 14 in jail. Most likely, it will be days before they have a hearing.
Photos From Safa today Taken by Giada Sal more photos here:




UPDATE:
The violence is over but two Israelis members of Ta’ayush are still in jail. Jesse has written a great post of the day over at his blog. Please check it out.




They should spend a day in the West Bank
Jul 18th
Posted by Joseph Dana in Unarmed Resistance
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Mairav Zonszein, Antony Loewenstein and Joseph Dana write:
The occupation can seem predictably mundane from a distance. To most Israelis the settlement project is seen as a problem, but a problem happening “over there” and utterly removed from their lives. Rampaging settlers are viewed occasionally on television. Violent Palestinians are seen to resist for no apparent reason. The international community and Barack Obama are protesting the illegal outposts and ongoing colonial project in the West Bank with polls suggesting that many Israelis are opposed to this apparently unfair pressure.
They should spend a day in the West Bank.
For the last three months, Ta’ayush activists have been accompanying Palestinian farmers from Safa to their lands just below the settlement of Bat Ayin. Since a child from the settlement was murdered in April, settlers have been consistently attacking Palestinians when they attempt to work in their fields, as well as burning the fields themselves – all under the nose of the IDF, which has done nothing to prevent the crimes or punish them.
The scenes from Safa in this period have been grim. If it is not the settlers aggressively driving out the local farmers, it is the army, which acts in complete disregard of Israeli Supreme Court rulings. After weeks of confrontations and brutal arrests, the army seemed to realize that we would not go away, and they would have to change their tactics.
Two weeks ago the army issued a 45-day closed military zone order on the agricultural land of Safa for all Israelis and internationals, asserting that our services would not be needed any longer, as they would ensure the Palestinians could work their land with the army’s protection. In these two weeks, Ta’ayush decided to respect the order and see if the army would indeed deliver on what it promised. However, during this time, the settlers infiltrated the agricultural land of Safa and cut down fruit trees and burned crop fields. Thus, despite the area being a closed military zone for all Israelis, somehow the settlers managed to get past the IDF and commit crimes.
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