School in a Cage
From a meeting the headmaster of the coeducational High School in Burin We arrive in the schoolyard, surrounded by big metal fences. Young boys are playing basketball. A loud “How are you? What is your name? Where are you from?”…
Olive Harvest – Impressions of Burin
During the last days we have been picking olives with different families in Burin, a Palestinian village south of Nablus. Our time in the fields was spiced with cooking Arabic coffee and frying eggs over small fires, eating homemade hummus…
The Olives of Beit Furiq
On Saturday 28 October IWPS and ISM joined farmers from the Palestinian village Beit Furiq who were picking olives near the settler road leading to the nearby Itamar illegal settlement. This Orthodox settlement is known for its history of violent…
Olive Harvest: Occupied
Kufr Qalil is one of the most dangerous places to pick olives north of Ramallah. Several years ago fanatical illegal settlers from Bracha descended from the top of a hill and broke a jaw of an elderly olive picker. Ever since the Kufr…
The battles of Burin
People in Burin have a very difficult life surrounded by the illegal settlements Yitzhar and Bracha. What I was not aware of until yesterday, when we again returned to help with the olive harvest, was that there is also an additional, small…
Unprecedented Settlement Expansion in Salfit
Kufr Dik and Bruqin – an update on the ongoing cycle of water shortages, settler sewage problems, and unprecedented settlement expansion. “This [Netanyahu’s] government has destroyed all hope of peace”, resident of Kufr Dik The water issue The two villages…
Army Steps Up Violence Against Deir Istiya Villagers
Bjork Vilhelmsdottir reporting form Deir Istiya: The Israeli military has taken to the next level threats against the three families living on the outskirts of Deir Istyia village in the Salfit region of the West Bank. At the end of…
Salfit Villagers Harrassed During Jumma Prayers
A peaceful demonstration and prayer took place yesterday, Friday 4 December ’15, on a hilltop between the Salfit’s villages Kafr ad-Dik, Bruqin, Sarta and Biddya. These villages are surrounded by the illegal Israeli settlements and industrial areas. As IWPS readers…
Khadoury University in Tulkarm: Studying on a battleground
IWPS, ISM and Michigan Peace Team visited, on 17 November ´15, the campus of Palestine Technical University- Khadoury in Tulkarem. Khadoury was established as an agricultural school in 1930. Nowadays it is offering education to 7.000 students in Industrial Engineering, Civil…
No Support From the Second Floor
No Support from Second Floor Hani and Munira Amer still live with 2 of their as yet unmarried children in the home they made for their family in Mas’ha after being driven off their ancestral in al Nakba. They lived…
Deir Istiya Informed of Colonial Land Confiscation from Newspaper
Deir Istya 4 November 2015 Israel notoriously creates and expands settlements all over the occupied West Bank in contravention of international law. Not only is this blatant colonisation of Palestine and land theft from Palestinians legally and morally wrong, it…
A Struggle to Harvest
Abu Said´s struggle to harvest on his land ´I will kill you all´, said the illegal Revava settler hurling abuses in Hebrew and in English at Abu Saed and a group of IWPS volunteers accompanying him, as he surged from…
Olive Trees Uprooted for Settler Highway
IWPS reporting from Deir Istiya, Salfit, West Bank, occupied Palestinian territories A lane is being added to the settler road dividing Deir Istiya land October 8, 2015 by IWPS Team (This article was first published on 26 September on…
Villages Of Palestine’s Heartland
Update on Bruqin and Kafr ad Dik Two villages in Salfit governorate, Bruqin and Kafr ad Dik, have been suffering from a severe shortage of water. Raw sewage and toxic chemicals are being dumped, by illegal Israeli settlements on the…
A Critical Juncture Reached in the Jordan Valley
This would be the second time Hassan’s home was demolished- a home where he lived with his children until a recent morning when he witnessed two bulldozers, ten jeeps and around fifty Israeli occupation soldiers approaching.
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