Blog: It's time to speak out

HEBRON:  Akram, age 15, was arrested for stone-throwing, and although he claims that he did not participate in such an act, he had to plead guilty to the charges so as to receive a sentence and avoid Israel’s open-ended ‘administrative detention’ (when someone is arrested without charges and held for an unspecified period of time). After serving two months in prison, he was recently released and allowed to return home without any money in his pocket or a telephone call to inform his parents. Thus, this past Sunday night, when he knocked on the front door of his home and his mother, Leila asked ”Who is there?” she did not believe him when he replied ”Akram”.

Leila called us that evening to tell us about the good news. The next morning we were invited to a gathering of the family, along with internationals, and journalists. We saw a young man who interacts so naturally with his siblings and nieces as if he had never been away. The father seems proud; this was the first time that we saw him smile since we arrived in Hebron. The interview the American NBC News TV channel, however, was a challenge for both parents, bringing them close to tears. Although he was the reason for arrival of the media and internationals to his home, he just seemed to enjoy being home again. Only when the journalists asked him to show the exact place where he was arrested, his face turned pale and he asked to be accompanied by others to go to there.

Akram is released but he is not free. If arrested for any reason (regardless of whether rightfully or wrongfully) within the next four years, he will automatically serve a minimum sentence of six-months in prison. Thus, he is confined to his home and does not want to leave it on his own; he has left one prison for another.

TULKAREM:  On 13 April 2010, Israeli Military Orders 1649 and 1650 were put into force.  These orders gave a vague definition as to what the Israeli Military considers an ‘infiltrator’ to be.  For the time being, Palestinians residing in the West Bank with Gaza Strip addresses on their ID cards have been labelled as infiltrators and forcibly deportated to the Gaza Strip; yet, the orders are vague enough to be used against anyone, and a person can be deported simply by the decision of any officer – no court hearings or judicial committees are warranted for such an action.

Last week, Ahmad Sabah (age 40) became a victim of the Orders.  He was arrested on 1 November 2001 and was released on 21 April 2010 after serving nine years in prison.  Instead of reuniting with his wife Hanan (35) and child Yazan (10), he was unexpectedly deported to the Gaza Strip.  This situation is particularly difficult for the family because their hopes to reestablish their family ties were sabatoged by political interference.  Yazan was only one year old and Hanan was recently married to Ahmad when he was arrested during a military incursion in his hometown of Tulkarem.  Ahmad was born in the West Bank but has Gaza listed as his address on his ID card, although he only lived in the strip for ten months.  The Israeli authorities refused to change his residency in 2000 and now they deported him for not doing so. 

Allegedly, on the day of his release, he received an ultimatum; he could be released to Gaza or serve another six months in jail.  He opted for the former.  When they arrived at the checkpoint close to the Gaza Strip he refused to cross over and is now living in a tent a few meters away.  He is adamant and refuses to move away unless Israeli authorities allow him to return to the West Bank.  Lawyers are investigating his case and they will explore the possibility for him to return to his family legally.

Over the past nine years, Hanan visited her husband four days every six months.  Thus, she became more and more excited as the end of his prison term approached.  She and their son have been alone with little support all this time.  Yazan and his uncle went to the Hebron checkpoint on the day of his release to welcome him while she eagerly waited at home.  Yet, the political agenda of Israel had a different fate in store for this family.  At the checkpoint, they received a notification that Ahmad would not be arriving to meet them, and that he was transferred to the Gaza Strip instead.  The notification of his deportation was shock for the family.  Yazan keeps asking “When will my father return?”, but nobody has an answer for him.

During the interview with her, we learned that her main concern now is not only for the safety of her husband, but she fears that her son may also be deported because he too inherited a Gaza address on his ID from his father.

JAYYOUS:  Through the lowered window of his car, the driver of a yellow bus exclaimed:  “Look!  Look who's the terrorist!  Israel is the terrorist!”  It is difficult not to see the heap of bricks, iron bars and dust accumulated near to the main road of the village of Harris.  The man then pointed to to the rubble of what was once a house, and the young man cries out:  “That was my uncle's home!  It took five years to build it, but only 30 minutes for the Israeli Military to destroy it!”

The neighbors, witnesses of the demolition scene, explain that several military jeeps arrived at around 8:00AM to block the road and cordon off the area, and then Maher Hassan’s home was reduced to rubble, because it was built on area C - where Israel has the administrative and military power.  To settle in this area, Palestinian people need to have a permit, otherwise the risk of destruction is not far away.  Maher's nephew said:  “My uncle built his house on a plot located in the village.  If we cannot have our house on our own land, where can we build?  Perhaps in the sky?” Dismayed, he adds:  “Israeli settlers can build wherever they want, even if it is on our fields!  Where is justice?”

Absent during the demolition, Maher came home from work to find the carnage.  He showed us the demoltion order, noting that it has someone else’s name on it, meaning his home was demolished by mistake.  This Palestinian in his forties has been working in Israel for 15 years.  His plan was to offer a new home to his wife and five children.  This dream of a new home has been reduced to nothingness. He must continue to live in his mother's house.  As we heard his story, some children were climbing the ruin of what was once his house, and when they reached the top, they made the sign of victory with their fingers.

YANOUN:  On Saturday, April 17th we experienced what our presence in Yanoun is all about.  Just after 1:00PM there was a loud banging on the door.  Our neighbour had come to tell us that settlers, from the Itamar Settlement, above us, were coming into the village.

We watched as a growing number of young Israeli men (about 20 in all) made their way to the village well.  Rashid, the  Mayor, suggested we could go down and try to talk to them.  This was not easy.  There was a language barrier, but attitude was a much bigger barrier.  They were intent on going down into the well to swim and nothing we could say about contaminating people’s drinking water would make any difference.  As far as they were concerned, this is their country and they will do whatever they want to in it.  This message was followed by insulting, racial comments about Arabs and ourselves as ‘foreign visitors’.  Two of them were armed, but there was never any threat of the arms being used, just a bit of pebble throwing at one point.

We stayed with them, hoping they would not do any damage while we were present and eventually they made their way up through the village and left.  About an hour later, a small number of them returned, but three Israeli Military vehicles arrived at the same time, probably as a result of the phone calls made by Rashid and myself to the Palestinian DCO, the UN and Rabbis for Human Rights.  They did not seem too interested in our version of events and when we showed them where six of the young men had climbed down to swim in the well, the comment of the officer in charge was “Brave Kids!”  However, their presence deterred the young settlers from returning and the villagers were able to get on with the main business of the day – a wedding celebration!

One week later, on Saturday, April 24th, the morning was tense, waiting to see if the settlers would return.  In the afternoon, the village reclaimed their well.  Rashid, assisted by the young men and boys of the village, completely emptied the well, allowing the water to flow between the thirsty olive trees.  Then the well was completely cleaned out, ready to be refilled with fresh water from the spring.  The ladder was cut and the trap door welded to prevent settlers from accessing the well and contaminating the water.  Thankfully in this village the spring still flows and the pipes remain undamaged, but the events of these two Saturdays were a sober reminder that water, which is a natural resource, essential to all life, has become a political weapon of the Israeli occupation.

TULKAREM:  She opened the door and greeted us, full of energy while three children clung to her skirt.  She spoke with clarity, without taking a breath, and told us "Ahlan wa'sahlan" (welcome) as we entered her home.  Ala'a met her husband, Mohamad, in 2002, when he came from Gaza to work in Tulkarem.  He was twenty years old, she was sixteen and both came from refugee families.  They married in 2004 and had three children: Raja' (6), Reyad (4) and Rowa (2).

At the end of 2007, an announcement was made on television that all citizens of Gaza must obtain a new permit to remain in the West Bank.  On their way to Nablus, Ala'a and Mohamed were stopped at a checkpoint.  After showing his I.D. card, Mohamed was immediately arrested and deported back to the Gaza Strip without an explanation.  Ala'a was left confused and alone.  They had not even had the time to say goodbye.  That was the last time she saw her husband.

Palestinians from the West Bank are not allowed into the Gaza Strip and visa-versa.  Moreover, it is frowned upon for a woman to live alone, so Ala’a and her children decided to move in with her brother, his wife and their five children.  As the years pass, the memory of their father is dwindling and the children are starting to refer to their uncle as "papa".  Recently, her husband sent her 250 shekels, which was all the money he could save during the last two years.  It might not be much, but it should be considered a miracle, since he is unemployed and the situation in Gaza is dire.

Even under these extreme circumstances, Ala'a remains hopeful.  She speaks with him on the telephone almost everyday, but she realizes that the distance (120km) is gradually leaning against them.  At this point it seems as though there is no solution with the power of the occupation hanging over them.

JAYYOUS:  We recently observed a protest in Deir Isteya.  On previous occasions, protesters in this village had been met with tear gas.  This week the protests passed smoothly.  Many of the participants said our presence along with media coverage kept the military from using force.  The soldiers even sat down and listened to speeches from the farmers as well as the Palestinian politician Dr. Mustafa Barghouti. 

On another occasion, we were in a meeting with the mayor of Azzun when his phone rang and he was informed that Israeli soldiers arrived in the village to arrest an 11-year-old boy.  The mayor asked that we go and see what was happening.  When we arrived, we saw three military vehicles and a little boy sitting by the road.  He was surrounded by seven heavily armed soldiers.  One of us accompaniers started taking pictures, while the rest of us went to talk to the soldiers and the boy.

We asked them why they wanted to arrest the boy.  They told us he had thrown stones at passing cars.  Our suggestion was therefore that they should try to talk to the boy instead of arresting him, and the discussion ended with the release of the boy.  Our conclusion is that cameras and accompaniers can surely do some good for those who suffer from this conflict.

YANOUN:  In late March, two young Palestinian men were killed as they worked in the fields below the Bracha settlement, near the West Bank city of Nablus. The circumstances of the killing were unclear, but we learnt that the young men, Salah Kamal Quawriq, 18, and Muhammad Faysal Quawriq, 19, had almost certainly been killed by Israeli settlers, possibly a small self styled settler militia. Certainly the young Awarta men were unarmed and had only their agricultural tools and water bottles.

On March 30th, Palestinian Land Day, we attended a commemoration event for the young men, in Awarta. Men lined the village streets as we arrived. We were joined in the town hall by a small group of women, including some from the ambulance team who had attended the incident. We spoke to Nyalla, whose husband and brother had been killed only 6 months previously in an incident with the Israeli army.

We set out to walk to the place where the young men were killed, a distance of about 3 km from the village. It was a solemn march, with many carrying pictures of the two young men. When we arrived at the spot people were anxious to tell us what happened and asked us to take pictures. Then they planted olive trees to commemorate the young men and to mark Palestinian Land Day. Some of the youths became high spirited and raced up the hill with the Palestinian flag. The older men watched anxiously in case armed settlers would appear at the fence on the brow of the hill. But the young men succeeded in planting the flag high on the hill, symbolically reclaiming their land.

The walk back was more relaxed. We shared food and drink and the young men were very keen to talk to us. Many of them had gone to school with Salah and Muhammad. We could see them wrestling with the mixed emotions of anger and grief. “The boys had a permit to go and work on this land, but even that is not safe,” said one of the men in the march.

BETHLEHEM:  Echoing Jesus’ ride through into Jerusalem about two thousand years ago, crowds of people waving palm branches accompanied riders on a pony and two donkeys through a checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem on Sunday, the Christian festival of Palm Sunday.

The march began with a small group at Manger Square in central Bethlehem.  As the crowd, accompanied by music and carrying signs or Palestinian flags, moved through the town, more and more people joined until it numbered about 150 Palestinians, Israeli activists, journalists and internationals.

The march was to protest the limitations placed upon Palestinians - Christians and Muslims - to travel to Jerusalem for worship at the holy sites in the city.

The march was supposed to have stopped at the checkpoint, but once the group reached the checkpoint gate for vehicles, approximately 100 protesters made their way through the gate. Apparently the security guards were unprepared:  they were far too few to be able to stop the demonstrators who managed to walk through the second gate and on to the road to downtown Jerusalem, still being led by the donkey and the horse.

About a hundered meters down the road, the Israeli police realized what had happened and blocked the way. The demonstrators stopped, although they easily could have marched on as there were only a few police officers on the scene.

In response, the checkpoint was closed for all vehicles and foot traffic attempting to enter Jerusalem.  According to Ma’an News, eleven Palestinians have been detained; four Israeli activists and one international person were detained and later released.

The following day, Checkpoint 300 - the main Bethlehem checkpoint - remained completely closed.  All of the checkpoints along the security barrier were only open to a limited number of people (international citizens, school children and Palestinians with specific work permits, worship permits or medical permits) for the Jewish holiday of Pesach. 

However, the Bethlehem checkpoint remained closed to all Jerusalem-bound traffic, foot and vehicle.  Those with humanitarian concerns or who want to enter Jerusalem for worship must attempt to cross at an alternate checkpoint.  There is no word yet about when the Bethlehem checkpoint will reopen.  Those who want to go to the Holy City of Jerusalem for the Christian worship services during Holy Week may be forced to travel further and longer.

JERUSALEM:  "You are on the wrong bus," says the driver as he refuses to accept my six shekels. "You are surely not going to the Shu'fat refugee camp. No foreigner goes there. You better go to the ‘Shu'fat City’ bus, No. 81." I insisted that I am in fact on the right bus, and he reluctantly accepted my money and I sat down. We are invited to visit Dr. Salim Anati, the only resident doctor in the camp. A man of about 50 years old who grew up and continues to live there with his wife and six children.

Shu'fat refugee camp houses approximately 30,000 people in a one square kilometre area. It was built in 1965 to house 3,000 refugees, who came to the Old City of Jerusalem after the Nakba - the catastrophe - in 1948, when 700-800,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes in what became Israel.

After three of his uncles were killed, Dr. Salim’s parents escaped their hometown of Lod to the Old City of Jerusalem, where they lived under miserable conditions until 1965. That year, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, together with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), offered 500 refugee families to move to an area called the Shu'fat Refugee Camp. Three thousand people moved there with what little they owned. Each family was given a 9 square meter room and 100 square meters of land to cultivate.

Dr. Salim was given the opportunity to attend a medical school in Romania. After finishing his studies, he felt committed to return to the camp to help improve the conditions there. He spends his spare time running an activity centre that consists of a small play ground, a sand box, and a music/dance room. The center also includes a small embroidery workshop, sandal factory, and a learning centre for children with special needs. Never have I seen so much made out of so little, and under such great opposition. After this was written, Dr. Salim was hit by a sound grenade while trying to take care of a wounded person at a checkpoint where clashes broke out between youth and soldiers last week. 

HEBRON:  On 1st March 2010, two young brothers from the Al-Muhtaseb family were arrested just before 3:00PM. Hassan is thirteen years old and Emir is eight. The thirteen year old was taken to Kyriat Arba police station and then to Ofer military prison, in the West Bank, where he was imprisoned for six days. Emir was taken to a military base inside the Beit Ramona settlement area in Hebron.

Their father told us that his eight year old son was blindfolded and was left sitting in a chair in the open air. He could hear the breathing of a dog beside him throughout his experience. He was jeered at by settler children. He was not given food or drink and was not allowed to go to the bathroom. His only recourse was to wet himself. He was kept like this until his release at 11:00PM that night.

When we met Emir a few days later he looked deathly pale. His father told us that he is screaming in his sleep, he has lost control of his bladder and that initially he was not talking, but just staring straight ahead. He is being attended to by a specialist doctor from the Prisoners’ Torture Centre in Hebron.

Meanwhile, one of the lawyers representing Hassan was quoted as  saying, "There were no witnesses who testified that he threw stones at Israeli soldiers. No indictment was filed against the boy."

On the 3rd of March, Hassan's detention was extended, with his father commenting, "My child was brought to court with both his hands and feet cuffed. He was very scared of the many soldiers around him. It is ironic that the judge extended his detention until Sunday until an indictment is issued against him."

Hassan appeared again in Ofer military court on the 6th of March. His father was asked to pay a bail of 2,000 shekels (800 euros). "What law allows a child to be tried in a military court and then asks his father to pay a fine?" he asks. During the military hearing, he was able to see his son across the court, but when he tried to talk with his young son he was pulled back by the soldiers (CNN recorded this).

According to Article 37 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Israel ratified on the 3rd October 1991, "The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child shall be in conformity with the law and shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time."