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IWPS Team working with other activists against the brutal occupation of Palestine…

The Last Family in Izbat Abu Adam

“My heart is aching,” said SA to the IWPS team this afternoon (10/12/11), looking out over land that had been in his family for generations, until it was seized by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). Their home is overlooked by the settlement of Burqan, as well as the Burqan and Ariel industrial zones. SA, along with his children and wife, are the lone remaining occupants of the village of Izbat Abu Adam.

Although the family have faced a sustained campaign of land seizure, denial of rights, harassment and mistreatment by the IOF and Israeli settlers for many years, they have consistently refused to leave their ancestral land. SA showed the team a spacious cave dating from Roman times, now used to house chickens, which is situated beneath the family home. Before the house was built, SA’s father and family lived in this cave, and SA himself was born in it.

The IWPS team were then shown the surrounding land, which the IOF took from the family, and other local families without warning or offer of compensation. The hills were bulldozed of their olive trees – of their original 600, only around 250 of their family trees now remain. The appropriated land was used to build the Israeli Burqan and Ariel industrial zones, which now manufacture a variety of products, including plastics, metals and textiles, reportedly creating vast chemical and environmental damage to the land and water supplies of the area.
The little remaining wheat grown by the family that survives the chemicals and destruction by wild boar – allegedly introduced by settlers to the area – is also under threat by sewage pumped there from settlements and the industrial zones. This is a health hazard and we were also told that the smell nearby the sewage filled areas is sickening. SA also pointed out a rubbish dump under the Burqan industrial zone and visible from his house, for which 3 dunums (one dunum = 1000m squared) of his land was taken. Rubbish from settlements all around the area is dumped here, adding insult to injury for the family.

Running directly through the middle of their land is a motorway, built in 1998 so that settlers could have easy access to Israel. 10 dunums of the family’s land was taken for this, but SA told us that the issues the road causes are even greater than just a reduction in their land ownership – rather than being able to travel directly to his land across the motorway, which is easily visible at less than half a kilometre away, he must travel 15 kilometres to get there. The IWPS team experienced firsthand what day-to-day travel is like for the family on our journey to the house, and saw that they are forced to travel on dangerously steep, rocky mud roads, which cause great difficulty for cars. SA joked “it would be quicker for me to travel to America than it would for me to get to my land.”

Another of the family’s problems is that all of their land is designated as “Zone C” meaning that it is entirely under Israeli control. Permission is rarely granted for Palestinians to increase the size of their homes, which is necessary as their children marry and start their own families. (Conversely Israel consistently encourages Zionists from all over the world to come and build new homes in the surrounding settlements– yet another example of the second-class citizenship of the Palestinian people.) In 1998, SA built an extension on the family’s home, to accommodate its increasing size. The IOF immediately issued a demolition order. SA told us how he dismantled the house himself, knowing that if the army were to do it, they would consequently provide him with a bill for their “services”. The remaining family now live in three rooms, two of which were the original structure and one of which SA built from wood, which makes it a temporary structure and therefore permissible. There are 250 people in his extended family, all of whom ideally in Palestinian culture would live very closely together. This is impossible for the family.

As well as all of this, they have faced discrimination and harassment from Israeli settlers. They told IWPS that shots have been fired at them from the road, that a donkey was taken and that olives from their remaining trees had been picked and stolen by Israelis from nearby settlements. SA’s wish for the future was “peace for all and to be able to live in safety with my family.”

SA’s wife, noticeably upset by talking about her family’s situation, left us with the words: “the life of every Palestinian is full of pain.”

IWPS meet with prisoner released in Shalit deal
December 26, 2011

The 18th of December was a day of reunion and celebration for many in Palestine. Following a tense wait, several delays and tear-gas attacks by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) on their waiting families, 550 Palestinian prisoners were released from Israeli jails to be reunited with their families and friends. SH was one of these lucky few exchanged for the IOF soldier Gilad Shalit – many thousands of Palestinian political prisoners remain imprisoned.

Eight years previously, during the Second Intifada, SH – a 27 year old villager of Kifl Haris – had been imprisoned for his political activities against the occupation. He was a member of the Fateh political party and was involved in organising resistance. We spoke to him on 26th December, 8 days after his release, in a room full of his family and friends, who were still gathering to celebrate. The house was festooned in flags, bunting and the celebratory poster published by Fateh on his release.

He told us that in 2002, a warrant was put out for his arrest. Whilst he managed to evade the Israeli authorities for a year and a half by moving around regularly, in November 2003 they caught up with him, arresting him at the house of a friend. He told us how he was taken to an Israeli interrogation centre and held for questioning for two months – here he said that the physical and psychological torture began from the first moment he arrived.

For the first seventeen days, SH said that he was held in solitary confinement – seeing only one policeman and his interrogator. He only found out how long he had been held afterwards, as his cell had no windows, meaning he had no concept of night and day. The disorientation was compounded by enforced sleep deprivation – he would be woken by the guard every time he managed to fall asleep, or he would be tied to a chair, the discomfort making sleep almost impossible. He recalled occasions when he had not been allowed to sleep for 5 days or more and how he came to consider one or two hours hours of sleep a luxury. These tactics are internationally considered as torture, and are a well known method of exhausting and confusing prisoners to extract confessions.

He then told us how he was also beaten during his interrogations – hit, kicked and beaten with sticks. SH was unwilling to go a lot of detail, the memories must be painful, and his elderly mother was present. During this time he was asked many questions about his involvement with the Fateh movement, his friends and co-party members and his actions against the occupation. He was regularly asked to sign a document in Hebrew which he was told was a confirmation of the statements he had made under interrogation. Each time he refused – requesting a translation into Arabic – the mistreatment would continue. On the 18th day, he was removed from solitary confinement and allowed to socialise with some other prisoners. However, he told us that Palestinian collaborators with the Israeli forces are common in these interrogation centres and – unsure who was friend and who foe – this was the time when he felt most at risk. He said that he had known other prisoners to be killed by collaborators.

On the 20th day, the Red Cross were allowed to visit – although as SH was aware of the presence of so many collaborators, this made him suspect that they may not truly have been Red Cross representatives, but he cannot be sure. What he does know is that a letter to his family did not arrive for a further three months, during which time they had no idea whether he was in hiding and unable to contact them, or whether he had been arrested. When the Red Cross letter eventually arrived, they were naturally devastated- “it was catastrophic – nothing is more sad than this” said SH’s brother.

After the two months of interrogation, SH signed a document which had finally been translated into Arabic. Although the information written on the form was true, he alleged that this information was not in fact what he was eventually charged on in court. However, he had a long wait until he was to find this out – the 23rd of January 2004 was his initial court hearing date. This was delayed for three months, and then delayed a further 7 times – It was over two years later that his hearing actually went ahead.

When the trial eventually occurred, SH says it was a farce. When we asked whether he considered his trial to have been fair, the whole room laughed – “everyone knows they are not fair trials” he said, still laughing. His lawyer was assigned by the Israeli government and he was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment, for attempted murder and organising resistance to the occupation – “they didn’t listen to the evidence, they just decided from what was in their heads” claims SH. Palestinians are sentenced in Israeli military courts rather than civilian, which have been found to rarely comply with international standards of fair trials.

During his sentence he was moved regularly – he remembers maybe four or five different prisons and life was difficult. The fact that he was held in prisons within Israel proper is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention which states that “Protected persons accused of offences shall be detained in the occupied country, and if convicted they shall serve their sentences therein” – SH was both detained and served his sentence outside of Occupied Palestine.

When asked about living conditions, SH commented darkly that if we wished to know what conditions were like in Israeli prisons, we need only spend a week there. He and his family stated that if he needed five new items of clothing, one would be permitted, and parcels of clothes from his family regularly did not arrive. The food was apparently neither healthy nor sufficient, and was not allowed to be supplemented by offerings from his family. The living space was shared with 10-12 men, all political prisoners. Because of this, SH says that the reputation that Israeli prisons have for being like a university for Palestinian prisoners is true – having not completed high school previously, SH did so during his time in prison, as well as completing two years of a Political Science degree. Without their freedom, the prisoners turned to books and political debate.

Communication with the outside world was very limited – whilst in theory, family visits were permitted every two weeks, they would regularly be delayed, cancelled or permission would not be granted – when they did go ahead, only one member of the family, SH’s mother, was allowed to visit, and even this was only once every two months at the most.

Tragically, SH’s older brother died whilst he was in prison, in a car accident with an Israeli settler. He told us he was permitted a five minute telephone call – making it impossible to speak to all of his thirteen brothers, four sisters, his parents and many other family members that he desperately wished to have contact with at such a hard time. Letters would take five months to reach his family, if at all, and then a return letter from them would take just as long. Eventually they gave up writing.

Life was also not easy for those who were left behind. Three of his brothers had previously found work within Israel. After SH’s arrest, they were denied the permits that they needed to do so, leaving them without work. This was apparently “for security reasons”, but is a clear form of collective punishment – illegal under international law.

His fiance, to whom he had been engaged before he was arrested, was left in limbo, unsure whether they would ever be able to start their lives together as they had planned. But she waited for his release, and happily their wedding is now planned for this summer.

His mother said that her son’s release was more than the joy of many, many weddings (although naturally she is still looking forward to his!). She and the whole family were relieved and overjoyed when they saw his name on the list of prisoners to be released – published online 4 days before the fact. They had been disappointed in the first half of the Gilad Shalit deal, but had held onto hope. SH himself only discovered that he was to be released 3 days before he was taken to Ramallah and met by his family.

He says that he will continue to be involved in politics and the fight against Palestinian oppression and occupation by Israel.

Click Tell Them the World is Watching to send a message to the Israeli Government.

Nabi Saleh Anniversary
The IWPS House team participated on Friday (9th Dec) in the 2nd anniversary Nabi Saleh protest. The demo started, as on every Friday, after the midday prayer in front of the main mosque, with a speech about the villagers’ struggle against the occupation, land theft and their determination to continue their peaceful resistance.
As we proceeded down the main road, we were immediately met with a barrage of teargas which was, almost without exception, fired at the demonstrators rather than into the air, as they should be for (comparatively) safe usage.
The rubber coated metal bullets soon followed and it was not surprising that in the first half an hour of the demonstration, we saw two individuals bleeding from their heads, one man with what looked like a broken leg and a boy with an injured foot, which he later told us was broken. A large number of people also suffered from teargas inhalation.
At around 1.30pm we were surprised to see a procession of 3 UN vehicles driving through the village gate, which the Israeli occupiers had previously closed. A villager friend told us that the UN had requested to come and observe the demonstration, and that they would do so from the hill above the village. As the UN vehicles passed, the teargassing eased off somewhat and the villagers joked that the UN should come more often, as it seemed that the Israelis wanted to impress them with their non-violent tactics. The quiet did not last long.

The demonstrators decided to go downhill in the direction of the stolen village spring, where a group of soldiers were visible standing in the field and amongst the olive trees. Teargas started to rain on us from all sides and many people needed aid from the extremely busy and helpful Palestinian Red Crescent volunteers. We then noticed a bulldozer, followed by several army and Border Police jeeps, travelling down the road that the protest had been following. Everybody rushed back fearing the possible intentions of the bulldozer and army entering the village. The village youth started throwing stones and one tried and failed to stick a Palestinian flag in the blade of the bulldozer. Large rocks, placed by the protesters on the road to prevent the army vehicles from entering the village, were removed by the bulldozer, after which all the vehicles and soldiers retreated to the village entrance.
Many of them stood behind the metal gate, installed by Israeli occupiers in Nabi Saleh, as in almost all of the villages in the West Bank. A group of mainly women followed the soldiers and the Border Police, who moved to line up in front of the gate in response, with around a further dozen of them standing in the field to the left of the gate. An army photographer was busy clicking away.
Earlier on Bushra Tamimi, wife of the imprisoned village leader Naji Tamimi, told us that in the last few days the army had arrested two Nabi Saleh youth, alleging that they have pictures of them throwing stones. The women were not intimidated. I could hear some of them saying ‘come on take a picture of me’. We saw the ambulance speeding by and were told that a villager called Mustafa Tamimi had been shot in the face with a teargas canister and that his situation did not look good. We then noticed a young woman waving a bloodied flag, which she said was soaked in Mustafa’s blood. Moments later, a Palestinian man ran from the Israeli side shouting for someone to retrieve Mustafa’s ID from his home! Amazing, but perhaps not surprising, that Israelis should insist that a man they just shot must have his ID in order to get what is likely to be life-saving treatment.
With only around a metre between them, and ignoring occupiers orders to leave, the women, joined by a group of men and internationals, sat on the street and questioned the soldiers and police. They asked what they were doing on their land and why they were besieging and tormenting their village. ‘This is our land, and not yours. We will never give up our land’ a woman told the soldiers, who seemed like they did not know what to do with themselves or where to look. Several women were telling soldiers that they kill innocent and defenseless Palestinians, asking them ‘Who are terrorists, us or you?’
The young woman with the flag soaked with Mustafa Tamimi’s blood then stood up and waved it in the face of each soldier, one by one. It was windy and the flag got wrapped around the faces of several soldiers, who stepped back and did nothing. The woman was shouting ‘Look, this is what you did. This is what you are responsible for and I hope that you will answer for this in court. All of you’. It was difficult to describe the scene that we were so privileged to witness: women and men of Nabi Saleh fearlessly telling their tormentors what is in their hearts and on their minds. Both their strength and their moral superiority was so obvious that occupiers did not know how to respond. The soldiers then decided to leave. They just turned back and the crowd cheered. The women got up and followed them to the closed gate and stood there. Again the soldiers looked completely lost and just stood there. A few moments after this, an army jeep sped up and stopped right at the yellow gate and started the unbearable noise called the ‘scream’. The women picked up rocks and responded by banging on the metal gate. Rocks, once more, against the Israeli latest high-tech weaponry. The racket that the women were making with their rocks was no less loud than the ‘scream’. I saw a soldier closing his ears with his hands and smiling. After a noise standoff which lasted about 10 minutes, the ‘scream’ was switched off and the soldiers retreated to near the tower, where they joined about 10 different army and police vehicles and tens of soldiers and police. The demonstrators opened the gate and waved a line of Palestinian cars through which only minutes ago Israelis ordered to turn away.
Written by Rada
Edited by Ellie
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By: International Women’s Peace Service