Arjun Ramachandran, The Sydney Morning Herald, May 13, 2008
With its ceramics classes and preschool storytime sessions, Leichhardt library - like most suburban libraries - is usually a pretty calm place.
But the "fear of god'' was reportedly put into its librarian when counter terrorism officers paid a visit to speak about an upcoming exhibition called "Al-Nakba", which means "catastrophe".
"Al-Nakba", a pictorial exhibition about Palestine and Israel, should have opened at Leichhardt municipal library last Friday.
But after the police visit on Thursday night, it was suddenly cancelled the next morning.
Friends of Hebron, a local activitist group, had been working on the exhibition of photos, poems and articles for eight months after the library agreed to host it last year.
"We set up the exhibition at the library on Thursday night and the librarian ... approved the exhibition, and said that it could be seen by children and other people,'' said Carole Lawson, a Friends of Hebron member.
Felt threatened
"But then that night, the [police] anti-terrorism squad visited the library and told her she had to vet the exhibition.
"They wanted to put the fear of god into the library staff and want the staff to feel threatened.''
On Friday morning, Ms Lawson said she received a call to tell her the exhibition had been pulled down.
"It's the censorship of Palestine - apparently the anti-terrorism squad decides what we can see on the public walls of a library.''
The librarian, Marilyn Taylor, would not speak to smh.com.au.
Leichhardt mayor Carolyn Allen confirmed police had visited the library on Thursday night, but said council, not police, had decided to pull down the exhibition because it hadn't met the council's criteria for such projects, which include not being divisive.
Counter Terrorism police just saying 'Hi!'
A police media spokesman said the officers were from the community contact unit, which falls within its Counter Terrorism operations. They had not visited the the library to to tell it to cancel the exhibition, but only to "say hi'' to Friends of Hebron members, he said.
"They went to introduce themselves to members of the community setting up the display and just to let them know who they are and what they are about. [Speaking with community groups] is part of their charter.
"When they got there the librarian was the only one there ... they just had a quick chat to the librarian.''
There had only been "a couple'' of officers involved, the spokesman said. He could not say what they said to her.
Cr Allen said the council pulled the exhibition down the morning after police visited because it had not had a chance to properly vet it.
Vetting exhibitions
Last year, council decided all projects - like the Al-Nakba exhibition - would first need to be assessed by a panel of councillors to ensure they were not divisive, she said.
This had not been done with Al-Nakba, and she blamed the late realisation of this on "a breakdown of managerial process''.
"I think it's regrettable that [the library] didn't talk about it earlier.
"I accept people might view it as [censorship] but ... I'm just implementing our policy that any exhibition that has our councils name on it needed to go through this process of making sure its not being divisive.
She said the visit by police had not influenced the decision.
"I suppose the librarian may have been a bit alarmed and concerned they had the anti-terrorism squad. I thought it was quite funny that the anti-terrorism squad would come [to a local library] - I found that a bit alarmist at the time.
Nothing disturbing
Ms Lawson said there was nothing alarming or disturbing about the exhibition, and that it merely raised the plight of "Palestinian refugees'' living in Hebron, about 30 kilometres south of Jerusalem.
"The exhibition was taken down because it was about Palestine, the dispossession of Palestinians and what's going on in Hebron," she said.
But Cr Allen said: "The people doing this exhibition clearly knew it wasn't in the general understanding of our agreement."
She objected to some captions, including one that said Palestinian children going to school needed protection from children from Israel who where throwing stones.
"Being in a public library is different to being in an exhibition space. If you're in an exhibition space and someone knows they are going into the exhibition, they expect to be educated and confronted. But most people going into a library just want to return books."
Showing posts with label hebron. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hebron. Show all posts
Wednesday, 21 May 2008
Friday, 14 March 2008
At-Tuwani - Israeli Soldiers and Border Police Assault Palestinian Shepherds
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cpthebron/message/1084
14 March 2008
While Palestinian shepherds grazed their sheep and worked in their olive groves in Khoruba valley, near the Palestinian village of At-Tuwani, Israeli police threatened them with arrest and assaulted them. A border police officer twisted the wrist of one shepherd and pushed him to the ground. Police grabbed another by his collar and pushed several other Palestinians. Palestinians were attempting to graze their sheep and repair olives trees damaged by Israeli settlers over the last month. Police also pushed and assaulted international volunteers accompanying the Palestinians, threatening them with arrest. No one was seriously injured.
Around 10 am, two border police jeeps, two army jeeps, and an Israeli civilian police vehicle arrived and spoke with Israeli settlers from the Havot Ma'on settlement outpost. When international volunteers approached the police and invited them to observe the damaged olive trees, an officer of the District Coordinating Office [a branch of the Israeli military that deals with civilian affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories] told them that the area was a closed military zone.
Police threatened to arrest two shepherds and assaulted two more. Police also threatened to arrest international volunteers and shoved and grabbed them as they attempted to leave the area. Police stomped on the feet of five internationals, calling one of them a whore, and twisted the wrists of two volunteers in an attempt to grab their video cameras. They also pushed another international into a rock.
Palestinians and international volunteers left the area and proceeded to the grove of olive trees where the village men prayed. Over the past month, Palestinians have found broken branches on a total of twelve trees. They believe that Israeli settlers are responsible for the damage, as settlers have destroyed trees in the past.
-----------------------------
Christian Peacemaker Teams is an ecumenical initiative to support violence reduction efforts around the world. To learn more about CPT's peacemaking work, visit our website www.cpt.org Photos of our projects are at www.cpt.org/gallery
A map of the center of Hebron is at http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/fullMaps_Sa.nsf/0/5618737E38C0B3DE8525708C004BA584/$File/ocha_OTS_hebron_oPt010805.pdf?OpenElement
The same map is the last page of this report on closures in Hebron:
www.humanitarianinfo.org/opt/docs/UN/OCHA/ochaHU0705_En.pdf
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cpthebron/message/1084
14 March 2008
While Palestinian shepherds grazed their sheep and worked in their olive groves in Khoruba valley, near the Palestinian village of At-Tuwani, Israeli police threatened them with arrest and assaulted them. A border police officer twisted the wrist of one shepherd and pushed him to the ground. Police grabbed another by his collar and pushed several other Palestinians. Palestinians were attempting to graze their sheep and repair olives trees damaged by Israeli settlers over the last month. Police also pushed and assaulted international volunteers accompanying the Palestinians, threatening them with arrest. No one was seriously injured.
Around 10 am, two border police jeeps, two army jeeps, and an Israeli civilian police vehicle arrived and spoke with Israeli settlers from the Havot Ma'on settlement outpost. When international volunteers approached the police and invited them to observe the damaged olive trees, an officer of the District Coordinating Office [a branch of the Israeli military that deals with civilian affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories] told them that the area was a closed military zone.
Police threatened to arrest two shepherds and assaulted two more. Police also threatened to arrest international volunteers and shoved and grabbed them as they attempted to leave the area. Police stomped on the feet of five internationals, calling one of them a whore, and twisted the wrists of two volunteers in an attempt to grab their video cameras. They also pushed another international into a rock.
Palestinians and international volunteers left the area and proceeded to the grove of olive trees where the village men prayed. Over the past month, Palestinians have found broken branches on a total of twelve trees. They believe that Israeli settlers are responsible for the damage, as settlers have destroyed trees in the past.
-----------------------------
Christian Peacemaker Teams is an ecumenical initiative to support violence reduction efforts around the world. To learn more about CPT's peacemaking work, visit our website www.cpt.org Photos of our projects are at www.cpt.org/gallery
A map of the center of Hebron is at http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/fullMaps_Sa.nsf/0/5618737E38C0B3DE8525708C004BA584/$File/ocha_OTS_hebron_oPt010805.pdf?OpenElement
The same map is the last page of this report on closures in Hebron:
www.humanitarianinfo.org/opt/docs/UN/OCHA/ochaHU0705_En.pdf
Wednesday, 9 January 2008
Palestinian Woman Gives Birth in Street at 3am After Soldiers Delay her at Checkpoint
Woman Gives Birth in Street at 3am As Soldiers Closed Checkpoint
January 8th, 2008 Posted in Reports - Hebron Region
Tel Rumeida
At 3am on Monday January 7th, Ahmad Sider was born in the street ten metres from an Israeli checkpoint in Hebron, after Israeli soldiers prevented his mother from passing for 25 minutes.
She went into labour during the night and shortly before 3am attempted to pass the checkpoint with her husband. They live in Tel Rumeida, in H2, the area of Hebron controlled by Israel under the Hebron protocols.
To reach the hospital they must pass the checkpoint on foot and meet an ambulance on the other side, as Palestinians are not permitted to drive in H2. The soldiers manning the checkpoint refused to let the couple pass, although his mother, Kifah (whose name means 'struggle'), was screaming and pleading with the soldiers to open the checkpoint, telling them she was about to give birth.
They continued to refuse, saying they required permission from their commander, even though there was no curfew in place and this checkpoint is supposedly open 24 hours a day. Kifah and her husband were finally allowed to pass 25 minutes later. However, just ten metres beyond the checkpoint, she collapsed on the street in pain.
Residents of a nearby house brought out a mattress and Ahmad was born on the street in below-zero temperatures. His father wrapped him in his jacket and within a few minutes a Palestinian ambulance took mother and child to the hospital.
Thankfully Kifah and Ahmad are now both safe and well.
========================================
Twilight Zone / Born in the shadow of a checkpoint
Gideon Levy, Ha'aretz, Friday, 25 January 2008
"You'll never walk alone." It's doubtful that a slogan used by the Israel Defense Forces has been read in such a macabre context. The slogan, in the name of the 92nd Auxiliary Unit, appears on the sign next to the checkpoint that blocks off the Tel Rumeida neighborhood in Hebron. True, Kifah Sider did not walk there alone. Her husband and brother-in-law were with her. In fact, she did not exactly walk. Groaning with contractions, she was carried by her husband. The young woman of 23 was in labor.
The soldiers held her up at the checkpoint for 20 critical minutes, the family says. In any case, she had to proceed on foot because this neighborhood, where evil stalks - a place ruled by a handful of sometimes-violent settlers who have forced out half the inhabitants - is barred to Palestinian vehicles. Including ambulances that can rush a woman in labor to the hospital in the dead of night. Evildoing resides here. The windows are barred because unruly settler children
throw stones. Cars are forbidden entry, and the way home passes through the checkpoint, with the message "You'll never walk alone" on the gate. But the 92nd Auxiliary offered no support that night. Its soldiers only delayed the pregnant woman until her screams finally persuaded them to let her through. On foot, of course. That was 20 minutes too late. It was no longer possible to rush the woman to Aliyah Hospital, a five-minute drive away. Kifah lay on the road, the neighbors brought a mattress, the husband took off his jacket, and in the subzero cold another checkpoint birth took place, delivered by the Israeli occupation. It wasn't the first, it won't be the last.
Ahmed was born under a bad sign, blue with cold. The drive to Tel Rumeida is harrowing. It's a ghost neighborhood: Everyone who was able to leave did so long ago. No decent Israeli can pass through without a choking feeling in the throat and chills down the spine. There are dozens of shuttered stores whose owners were forced to look for a different source of livelihood, hundreds of abandoned apartments whose occupants were terrorized by the settlers and fled. The streets,
including the famed Shuhada Street, where the stores were once renovated by the U.S. government to allow life to carry on, are appallingly deserted. Only a settler's car or an army jeep speeds by from time to time, shattering the oppressive silence. The neighborhood school once had 400 pupils; now there are 90, and the children who attend are in constant danger of being attacked by settlers. Happily residing amid this desolation are the settlers, the lords of the land. When Kifah was in her eighth month, she was assaulted by a settler. He pushed her and spat at her until she fled into her brother-in-law's home, taking refuge behind the iron door. Just routine. Settlers once threw stones at her mother-in-law as she was hanging out the laundry on the roof of her home. The elderly woman was wounded in the head. The police came and left. "They are small kids," the policemen said before leaving without taking action, at the sight of the settler children who had thrown the stones and were still on the street when the forces of law and order arrived. That was a few months ago. In the wake of that event, the Sider family - who have not left because they are unable to - decided not to file any further complaints with the police. "There is no point," the father of the family, Ashraf, says drily.
Kifah and Ashraf Sider, a young couple, have two children: Shireen, not yet 2, and Ahmed, about two weeks old. Ashraf works for a local factory that makes heaters, but his home is freezing. Only a small spiral electric heater tries vainly to dispel the unbearable cold in the stone building that houses their well-kept home. They are wrapped in coats, the children in woolen blankets. It was bitterly cold on the night of January 7. Shortly before 3 A.M. Kifah was awakened by her
contractions. The hospital where they had registered for the birth lies 250 meters from their home, but on the other side of the checkpoint. Crossing it, at least at night, is like venturing into the back of beyond. The checkpoint is open to pedestrians day and night, but crossing it at night is hard. Kifah woke Ashraf. The bag was ready with warm clothes for the baby about to be born. Their home and their children are well looked after - a glass cabinet filled with small dining utensils, a splash of plastic flowers, a "spritz" finish on the ceiling. And even the fan attached to the wall is kept under a colorful cover during the winter.
They called the family of Ashraf's brother, who live across the way, and asked them to watch little Shireen. They took the bag for the hospital and walked slowly down the stairs to the cold, dark street. It's a steep walk of a few dozen meters to the bottom of the street where the pedestrian checkpoint is located; you can see it through the bars on the family's window. The brother-in-law, Firas, who works in the Mishor Adumim settler industrial zone in the West Bank and speaks a little Hebrew, joined them on the way to the hospital to ease the passage through the checkpoint. Kifah could hardly walk; Ashraf decided to carry her in his arms. She groaned. They reached the checkpoint in a few minutes. Before leaving home they had called an
ambulance, knowing it would not be allowed to enter their street but wanting it to be waiting for them on the other side of the checkpoint. So they thought. Musa Abu Hashhash, a fieldworker for the B'Tselem human rights organization, says a Palestinian ambulance can sometimes enter Israeli-controlled territory in Hebron, but only to save lives, and then the "coordination" takes up to two hours. At the checkpoint they somehow managed to get Kifah on her feet, with the help of her husband. Firas tried to explain to the soldiers that Kifah was about to give birth any minute. It was very cold. The checkpoint's door was closed. The soldiers said they had to call their commander and ask him. Firas retorted that there was no curfew in the neighborhood and
what was there to ask - the woman was obviously in labor. The soldiers told them to wait in the street. Firas asked them to open the door at least and let them into the heated space, but no. "Wait, wait," a soldier said, "just a second, just a second." They stood and waited. Kifah started to scream. She told her husband that she felt the baby was about to enter the world. Her cries intensified. It was only after what they estimate was 20 minutes that the soldiers agreed to let them through. "Only when they realized that it was serious," Ashraf says. "Then they opened the door and said, 'Yalla, yalla, go through.'" It was now about 3:15 A.M. They passed through the checkpoint. But after a few more steps Kifah felt she could wait no longer. Actually, it was
the baby that could wait no longer. "The baby is coming out! The baby is coming out!" Kifah shouted to the cold, empty night, seconds after going through the checkpoint. The ambulance they had called was waiting but could not get closer because of the concrete cubes that block the passage. Ashraf had his wife lie down in the street.
Neighbors who heard Kifah's screams hurried downstairs with a mattress for her to lie on, to ease the street birth as much as possible. Two paramedics rushed over from the ambulance. By the time they arrived the infant was out. They saw to mother and child, cutting the umbilical cord on the street. They asked for something warm to wrap the baby in, and Ashraf took off his jacket and covered his newborn son with it. Kifah tells us now, apologetically, that her clothes were bloodstained and so she could not use them to wrap the baby in. Ashraf says the infant was dark blue, "like my pants." The paramedics decided to leave Kifah where she was, lying in the street - they asked her not to move - and to rush the baby to the hospital to rescue him from the
freezing cold. Kifah says she was certain he was already dead. He did not cry when he was born. She was sure that all her nine months of waiting had been in vain. The ambulance returned 10 minutes later to evacuate Kifah. They carried her to the ambulance on the neighbors' mattress and from there to the hospital. Kifah was admitted at 4:15 A.M., one hour after leaving her home on her way to the hospital, a five-minute drive. Throughout, they say, the soldiers watched the
unfolding events from the checkpoint. "I thought they would have a different humanity," Ashraf says. The IDF Spokesperson's Office issued the following response: "On the night of January 7, 2008, a Palestinian women accompanied by two young men arrived at the checkpoint near Tel Rumeida, as she was about to give birth. When the soldier saw that she was pointing at her belly and expressing herself in an articulate manner he immediately called for an army medic,
ambulance and doctor in order to assist her. The Palestinian woman passed through the
checkpoint with no delay whatsoever and within a few minutes she was evacuated by a Red Crescent ambulance. The IDF employed all means possible in order to assist the birthing
mother." Ahmed was placed in an incubator for a few hours, to raise his body temperature. He weighed 2.5 kilograms. The next afternoon the family was quick to check him and his mother out of the hospital because of what they describe as the inferior conditions of the obstetrics ward. "It's better at home." Mother and son are doing well, as the saying goes, despite everything, almost miraculously. His name was given to him long before, because as a child his father, Ashraf, was called Abu Ahmed - father of Ahmed. Since the birth their home has been filled with well-wishers. The happiness this time is greater than when Shireen was born. With her they reached the hospital in time; she was born in the morning. They sit for a group portrait - mother, father, daughter and son - showing the semblance of a happy, secure, tranquil family.
January 8th, 2008 Posted in Reports - Hebron Region
Tel Rumeida
At 3am on Monday January 7th, Ahmad Sider was born in the street ten metres from an Israeli checkpoint in Hebron, after Israeli soldiers prevented his mother from passing for 25 minutes.
She went into labour during the night and shortly before 3am attempted to pass the checkpoint with her husband. They live in Tel Rumeida, in H2, the area of Hebron controlled by Israel under the Hebron protocols.
To reach the hospital they must pass the checkpoint on foot and meet an ambulance on the other side, as Palestinians are not permitted to drive in H2. The soldiers manning the checkpoint refused to let the couple pass, although his mother, Kifah (whose name means 'struggle'), was screaming and pleading with the soldiers to open the checkpoint, telling them she was about to give birth.
They continued to refuse, saying they required permission from their commander, even though there was no curfew in place and this checkpoint is supposedly open 24 hours a day. Kifah and her husband were finally allowed to pass 25 minutes later. However, just ten metres beyond the checkpoint, she collapsed on the street in pain.
Residents of a nearby house brought out a mattress and Ahmad was born on the street in below-zero temperatures. His father wrapped him in his jacket and within a few minutes a Palestinian ambulance took mother and child to the hospital.
Thankfully Kifah and Ahmad are now both safe and well.
========================================
Twilight Zone / Born in the shadow of a checkpoint
Gideon Levy, Ha'aretz, Friday, 25 January 2008
"You'll never walk alone." It's doubtful that a slogan used by the Israel Defense Forces has been read in such a macabre context. The slogan, in the name of the 92nd Auxiliary Unit, appears on the sign next to the checkpoint that blocks off the Tel Rumeida neighborhood in Hebron. True, Kifah Sider did not walk there alone. Her husband and brother-in-law were with her. In fact, she did not exactly walk. Groaning with contractions, she was carried by her husband. The young woman of 23 was in labor.
The soldiers held her up at the checkpoint for 20 critical minutes, the family says. In any case, she had to proceed on foot because this neighborhood, where evil stalks - a place ruled by a handful of sometimes-violent settlers who have forced out half the inhabitants - is barred to Palestinian vehicles. Including ambulances that can rush a woman in labor to the hospital in the dead of night. Evildoing resides here. The windows are barred because unruly settler children
throw stones. Cars are forbidden entry, and the way home passes through the checkpoint, with the message "You'll never walk alone" on the gate. But the 92nd Auxiliary offered no support that night. Its soldiers only delayed the pregnant woman until her screams finally persuaded them to let her through. On foot, of course. That was 20 minutes too late. It was no longer possible to rush the woman to Aliyah Hospital, a five-minute drive away. Kifah lay on the road, the neighbors brought a mattress, the husband took off his jacket, and in the subzero cold another checkpoint birth took place, delivered by the Israeli occupation. It wasn't the first, it won't be the last.
Ahmed was born under a bad sign, blue with cold. The drive to Tel Rumeida is harrowing. It's a ghost neighborhood: Everyone who was able to leave did so long ago. No decent Israeli can pass through without a choking feeling in the throat and chills down the spine. There are dozens of shuttered stores whose owners were forced to look for a different source of livelihood, hundreds of abandoned apartments whose occupants were terrorized by the settlers and fled. The streets,
including the famed Shuhada Street, where the stores were once renovated by the U.S. government to allow life to carry on, are appallingly deserted. Only a settler's car or an army jeep speeds by from time to time, shattering the oppressive silence. The neighborhood school once had 400 pupils; now there are 90, and the children who attend are in constant danger of being attacked by settlers. Happily residing amid this desolation are the settlers, the lords of the land. When Kifah was in her eighth month, she was assaulted by a settler. He pushed her and spat at her until she fled into her brother-in-law's home, taking refuge behind the iron door. Just routine. Settlers once threw stones at her mother-in-law as she was hanging out the laundry on the roof of her home. The elderly woman was wounded in the head. The police came and left. "They are small kids," the policemen said before leaving without taking action, at the sight of the settler children who had thrown the stones and were still on the street when the forces of law and order arrived. That was a few months ago. In the wake of that event, the Sider family - who have not left because they are unable to - decided not to file any further complaints with the police. "There is no point," the father of the family, Ashraf, says drily.
Kifah and Ashraf Sider, a young couple, have two children: Shireen, not yet 2, and Ahmed, about two weeks old. Ashraf works for a local factory that makes heaters, but his home is freezing. Only a small spiral electric heater tries vainly to dispel the unbearable cold in the stone building that houses their well-kept home. They are wrapped in coats, the children in woolen blankets. It was bitterly cold on the night of January 7. Shortly before 3 A.M. Kifah was awakened by her
contractions. The hospital where they had registered for the birth lies 250 meters from their home, but on the other side of the checkpoint. Crossing it, at least at night, is like venturing into the back of beyond. The checkpoint is open to pedestrians day and night, but crossing it at night is hard. Kifah woke Ashraf. The bag was ready with warm clothes for the baby about to be born. Their home and their children are well looked after - a glass cabinet filled with small dining utensils, a splash of plastic flowers, a "spritz" finish on the ceiling. And even the fan attached to the wall is kept under a colorful cover during the winter.
They called the family of Ashraf's brother, who live across the way, and asked them to watch little Shireen. They took the bag for the hospital and walked slowly down the stairs to the cold, dark street. It's a steep walk of a few dozen meters to the bottom of the street where the pedestrian checkpoint is located; you can see it through the bars on the family's window. The brother-in-law, Firas, who works in the Mishor Adumim settler industrial zone in the West Bank and speaks a little Hebrew, joined them on the way to the hospital to ease the passage through the checkpoint. Kifah could hardly walk; Ashraf decided to carry her in his arms. She groaned. They reached the checkpoint in a few minutes. Before leaving home they had called an
ambulance, knowing it would not be allowed to enter their street but wanting it to be waiting for them on the other side of the checkpoint. So they thought. Musa Abu Hashhash, a fieldworker for the B'Tselem human rights organization, says a Palestinian ambulance can sometimes enter Israeli-controlled territory in Hebron, but only to save lives, and then the "coordination" takes up to two hours. At the checkpoint they somehow managed to get Kifah on her feet, with the help of her husband. Firas tried to explain to the soldiers that Kifah was about to give birth any minute. It was very cold. The checkpoint's door was closed. The soldiers said they had to call their commander and ask him. Firas retorted that there was no curfew in the neighborhood and
what was there to ask - the woman was obviously in labor. The soldiers told them to wait in the street. Firas asked them to open the door at least and let them into the heated space, but no. "Wait, wait," a soldier said, "just a second, just a second." They stood and waited. Kifah started to scream. She told her husband that she felt the baby was about to enter the world. Her cries intensified. It was only after what they estimate was 20 minutes that the soldiers agreed to let them through. "Only when they realized that it was serious," Ashraf says. "Then they opened the door and said, 'Yalla, yalla, go through.'" It was now about 3:15 A.M. They passed through the checkpoint. But after a few more steps Kifah felt she could wait no longer. Actually, it was
the baby that could wait no longer. "The baby is coming out! The baby is coming out!" Kifah shouted to the cold, empty night, seconds after going through the checkpoint. The ambulance they had called was waiting but could not get closer because of the concrete cubes that block the passage. Ashraf had his wife lie down in the street.
Neighbors who heard Kifah's screams hurried downstairs with a mattress for her to lie on, to ease the street birth as much as possible. Two paramedics rushed over from the ambulance. By the time they arrived the infant was out. They saw to mother and child, cutting the umbilical cord on the street. They asked for something warm to wrap the baby in, and Ashraf took off his jacket and covered his newborn son with it. Kifah tells us now, apologetically, that her clothes were bloodstained and so she could not use them to wrap the baby in. Ashraf says the infant was dark blue, "like my pants." The paramedics decided to leave Kifah where she was, lying in the street - they asked her not to move - and to rush the baby to the hospital to rescue him from the
freezing cold. Kifah says she was certain he was already dead. He did not cry when he was born. She was sure that all her nine months of waiting had been in vain. The ambulance returned 10 minutes later to evacuate Kifah. They carried her to the ambulance on the neighbors' mattress and from there to the hospital. Kifah was admitted at 4:15 A.M., one hour after leaving her home on her way to the hospital, a five-minute drive. Throughout, they say, the soldiers watched the
unfolding events from the checkpoint. "I thought they would have a different humanity," Ashraf says. The IDF Spokesperson's Office issued the following response: "On the night of January 7, 2008, a Palestinian women accompanied by two young men arrived at the checkpoint near Tel Rumeida, as she was about to give birth. When the soldier saw that she was pointing at her belly and expressing herself in an articulate manner he immediately called for an army medic,
ambulance and doctor in order to assist her. The Palestinian woman passed through the
checkpoint with no delay whatsoever and within a few minutes she was evacuated by a Red Crescent ambulance. The IDF employed all means possible in order to assist the birthing
mother." Ahmed was placed in an incubator for a few hours, to raise his body temperature. He weighed 2.5 kilograms. The next afternoon the family was quick to check him and his mother out of the hospital because of what they describe as the inferior conditions of the obstetrics ward. "It's better at home." Mother and son are doing well, as the saying goes, despite everything, almost miraculously. His name was given to him long before, because as a child his father, Ashraf, was called Abu Ahmed - father of Ahmed. Since the birth their home has been filled with well-wishers. The happiness this time is greater than when Shireen was born. With her they reached the hospital in time; she was born in the morning. They sit for a group portrait - mother, father, daughter and son - showing the semblance of a happy, secure, tranquil family.
Wednesday, 31 October 2007
Hebron: settler attacks tour guide for human rights
Children of Abraham (Bnei Avraham) is a Jewish direct action group, active in Hebron. In one of the tours they give, they were assaulted by an extreme settler (Noam Federman). This file is the evidence used by the police.
For more videos of settlers' violence in Hebron, and for activities and study-tours, please visit our website, or email us to: tours2hebron [@] gmail.com
---------------------------------------
Jerry Haber - Tuesday, October 23, 2007
More Settler Harrassment of Human Rights Activists
---------------------------------------
http://groups.google.com/group/bnei-avraham/
Bnei Avraham is an activity based group born out of the desperate situation in the city of Hebron. The group has been active for more then a year now and is composed of Israeli activists from various backgrounds. Our main focus is on-the-ground joint Palestinian-Israeli activity in the city of Hebron, Targeted to disturbing the occupation, disrupting the segregation and apartheid regime, creating a basis for understanding and cooperation among all the members.
Update from Hebron and call for action in the field and at home - Disturbances to tours
In the last few weeks the settlers started hassling our tours, partly
because of our successful attempt to prevent them from taking over a
house in Tel Rumeide, and our cooperation with Gaabri family where the
settlers try to take over land. They didn’t like our tours, but now
they feel we make a difference on the ground. These days it in
important to concentrate efforts and continue the tours. See the last
video in our google group:
http://groups.google.com/group/bnei-avraham/web/video-from-hebron
Blair admits he is shocked by discrimination on the West Bank
Donald Macintyre in Hebron - The Independent - October 13, 2007
He was shocked by what he was told about conditions in Hebron and diplomats say he was genuinely taken aback by his trip to the West Bank sector of the Jordan Valley – where Palestinians are allowed to dig wells only a third as deep as Israelis – at the exploitation of resources by the rich Jewish agricultural settlements at the expense of closed in Palestinian farmers.
He was shocked by what he was told about conditions in Hebron and diplomats say he was genuinely taken aback by his trip to the West Bank sector of the Jordan Valley – where Palestinians are allowed to dig wells only a third as deep as Israelis – at the exploitation of resources by the rich Jewish agricultural settlements at the expense of closed in Palestinian farmers.
Tuesday, 30 October 2007
Palestinian olive farmers face threat of attack by settlers
22 October 2007
Al Jazeera's David Chater meets the Palestinian olive farmers who can only reach their crop with the protection of peace activists.
Sunday, 30 September 2007
Settlers attack the Abu Eisha family in Tel Rumeida, Hebron
In the center of the city of Hebron lies the "Tel Rumeida" neighborhood. In 1986, a new settlement was established at the heart of the neighborhood. The settlers of Tel Rumieda, who known as particularly extreme, live on one side of a dead-end street... The Abu Eisha family lives on the other side.
Commentary on recent video showing Hebron settler woman harassing Abu Aisha family
CPT, Wednesday January 24 2007
B'Tselem - Testimony of Taysir Abu 'Ayesha, January 2007
Daily attacks by settlers on the Abu 'Ayesha family, Tel Rumeida, Hebron
Yifat Alkobi leads colonist trespass on Tel Rumeida Hill
ISM Hebron, February 19th 2007
Today at 4 pm human rights workers (HRWs) decided to pass by local resident Issa Amro’s house on Tel Rumeida hill. In the past week colonists had occupied this Palestinian property several times.
When the HRWs arrived at the house, they noticed a group of colonists, 2 men, 5 women and 15 children, had entered the house and garden again. It was only yesterday that they were sent away by the police. The colonists took pictures of the HRWs and one of the women, Yifat Alkobi, videotaped them. Yifat Alkobi is notorious from the “Sharmouta video”.
===========================
International observers to open new office in Hebron's old city
Ma'an News, 17 / 09 / 2007
The Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) is opening another office in the old city of Hebron this week. The organization says the new office on Salah Al-Din Street, just next to the municipal square, will serve Palestinians in the Old City to reach TIPH more easily.
Head of Mission Karl-Henrik Sjursen says the new office demonstrates TIPH's commitment to Hebron's people to observe and report on the abuses committed by Israeli settlers and military forces.
Hebron's old city has been mainly abandoned by its former Palestinian residents due to settler violence. A tiny minority of residents continue to live there despite the ongoing harassment from the militant settler compounds nearby.
Created in the Oslo peace agreement, TIPH is a civilian observer mission in the West Bank city of Hebron. According to the group, TIPH "reports on breaches of regional agreements on Hebron and human rights law to the Israeli and Palestinian parties both on a local level and on a national level."
Diplomatic representatives of all the six member countries of TIPH - Norway, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Turkey and Switzerland – will be present at an opening ceremony for the new office on the 18th of September.
---------------------------
"CPT: Dealing with threats on your life"
Nigel Parry, Hebron Diary, 23 January 1998
My e-mail in-box was busy this last week, with reports and updates from the violence reduction presence of the red-capped Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) in Hebron, all relating to recent death threats against three of their members.
I've read CPT reports for some time now, and both these and the CPT archives represent an oasis of information coming out of a desert of silence. In Hebron we had endured both the "we work with the authorities and cannot comment" silence of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the "Our reports are passed on to committees [somewhere]" silence of the mostly Norweigen Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH). TIPH unfortunately means "spit" in Arabic, and silence - which is what ultimately results from no-publish human rights mandates - is what keeps the violators happy and makes you want to make the same sound as the name.
Commentary on recent video showing Hebron settler woman harassing Abu Aisha family
CPT, Wednesday January 24 2007
B'Tselem - Testimony of Taysir Abu 'Ayesha, January 2007
Daily attacks by settlers on the Abu 'Ayesha family, Tel Rumeida, Hebron
Yifat Alkobi leads colonist trespass on Tel Rumeida Hill
ISM Hebron, February 19th 2007
Today at 4 pm human rights workers (HRWs) decided to pass by local resident Issa Amro’s house on Tel Rumeida hill. In the past week colonists had occupied this Palestinian property several times.
When the HRWs arrived at the house, they noticed a group of colonists, 2 men, 5 women and 15 children, had entered the house and garden again. It was only yesterday that they were sent away by the police. The colonists took pictures of the HRWs and one of the women, Yifat Alkobi, videotaped them. Yifat Alkobi is notorious from the “Sharmouta video”.
===========================
International observers to open new office in Hebron's old city
Ma'an News, 17 / 09 / 2007
The Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) is opening another office in the old city of Hebron this week. The organization says the new office on Salah Al-Din Street, just next to the municipal square, will serve Palestinians in the Old City to reach TIPH more easily.
Head of Mission Karl-Henrik Sjursen says the new office demonstrates TIPH's commitment to Hebron's people to observe and report on the abuses committed by Israeli settlers and military forces.
Hebron's old city has been mainly abandoned by its former Palestinian residents due to settler violence. A tiny minority of residents continue to live there despite the ongoing harassment from the militant settler compounds nearby.
Created in the Oslo peace agreement, TIPH is a civilian observer mission in the West Bank city of Hebron. According to the group, TIPH "reports on breaches of regional agreements on Hebron and human rights law to the Israeli and Palestinian parties both on a local level and on a national level."
Diplomatic representatives of all the six member countries of TIPH - Norway, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Turkey and Switzerland – will be present at an opening ceremony for the new office on the 18th of September.
---------------------------
"CPT: Dealing with threats on your life"
Nigel Parry, Hebron Diary, 23 January 1998
My e-mail in-box was busy this last week, with reports and updates from the violence reduction presence of the red-capped Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) in Hebron, all relating to recent death threats against three of their members.
I've read CPT reports for some time now, and both these and the CPT archives represent an oasis of information coming out of a desert of silence. In Hebron we had endured both the "we work with the authorities and cannot comment" silence of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the "Our reports are passed on to committees [somewhere]" silence of the mostly Norweigen Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH). TIPH unfortunately means "spit" in Arabic, and silence - which is what ultimately results from no-publish human rights mandates - is what keeps the violators happy and makes you want to make the same sound as the name.
Saturday, 29 September 2007
B'Tselem: Settlers harrassing Palestinians in Hebron
Videos from B'Tselem - September 2007
New settlement in Hebron - settler kids throwing stones
Settler kids throwing stones from road.
Hebron - Settlers at the door of a Palestinian house
Settlers stand in front of a Palestinian house opposite the new settlement, annoying the inhabitants.
Hebron - Children throwing stones from a window
Children throwing stones from a window of the new settlement.
Hebron - Palestinians attacked by settler kids
Palestinians on their way home attacked by settler kids in Tel Rumeida.
==========================
Nigel Parry's Hebron diary
17-18 January 1997
"A closer look at Hebron's 'Jewish community' "
--------------------------------
VIDEO: Settlers attack the Abu Eisha family in Tel Rumeida, Hebron
In the center of the city of Hebron lies the "Tel Rumeida" neighborhood. In 1986, a new settlement was established at the heart of the neighborhood. The settlers of Tel Rumieda, who known as particularly extreme, live on one side of a dead-end street... The Abu Eisha family lives on the other side.
New settlement in Hebron - settler kids throwing stones
Settler kids throwing stones from road.
Hebron - Settlers at the door of a Palestinian house
Settlers stand in front of a Palestinian house opposite the new settlement, annoying the inhabitants.
Hebron - Children throwing stones from a window
Children throwing stones from a window of the new settlement.
Hebron - Palestinians attacked by settler kids
Palestinians on their way home attacked by settler kids in Tel Rumeida.
==========================
Nigel Parry's Hebron diary
17-18 January 1997
"A closer look at Hebron's 'Jewish community' "
--------------------------------
VIDEO: Settlers attack the Abu Eisha family in Tel Rumeida, Hebron
In the center of the city of Hebron lies the "Tel Rumeida" neighborhood. In 1986, a new settlement was established at the heart of the neighborhood. The settlers of Tel Rumieda, who known as particularly extreme, live on one side of a dead-end street... The Abu Eisha family lives on the other side.
Sunday, 16 September 2007
New UN report highlights conflict over resources in West Bank
HEBRON HILLS, WEST BANK, 11 September 2007 (IRIN)
Israeli settlements in the West Bank are having a severe humanitarian impact on rural Palestinian areas, according to a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on 30 August.
-------------------------------
The Humanitarian Impact on Palestinians of Israeli Settlements and Other Infrastructure in the West Bank
The report examines the humanitarian impact on Palestinians from the ongoing settlements in the West Bank and other Israeli infrastructure, such as the Barrier and the roads that accompany them.
The analysis shows that more than 38% of the West Bank is now taken up by Israeli infrastructure.
Roads linking settlements and other infrastructure to Israel – in conjunction with an extensive system of checkpoints and roadblocks – have fragmented the West Bank into a series of enclaves separating Palestinian communities from each other. The socio-economic impact has been profound.
Israeli settlements in the West Bank are having a severe humanitarian impact on rural Palestinian areas, according to a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on 30 August.
-------------------------------
The Humanitarian Impact on Palestinians of Israeli Settlements and Other Infrastructure in the West Bank
The report examines the humanitarian impact on Palestinians from the ongoing settlements in the West Bank and other Israeli infrastructure, such as the Barrier and the roads that accompany them.
The analysis shows that more than 38% of the West Bank is now taken up by Israeli infrastructure.
Roads linking settlements and other infrastructure to Israel – in conjunction with an extensive system of checkpoints and roadblocks – have fragmented the West Bank into a series of enclaves separating Palestinian communities from each other. The socio-economic impact has been profound.
Abbas' Village League
Arjan El Fassed - The Electronic Intifada - September 10, 2007
For as long Palestinians have resisted violent Israeli policies against them, successive Israeli governments have tried to undermine Palestinian unity and foment divisions. A principal strategy has been to try to foster alternative leaders willing to abandon fundamental Palestinian demands for justice and focus on an agenda with which Israel is comfortable.
For as long Palestinians have resisted violent Israeli policies against them, successive Israeli governments have tried to undermine Palestinian unity and foment divisions. A principal strategy has been to try to foster alternative leaders willing to abandon fundamental Palestinian demands for justice and focus on an agenda with which Israel is comfortable.
Palestinian Human Rights Worker Arrested at Qurtuba School in Hebron
ISM, September 12th, 2007: Tel Rumeida, Hebron
At 7.25pm 11.9.07 ISM activists received a phone call saying there was a disturbance outside Qurtuba school. The school is in Tel Rumeida, Hebron opposite the Beit Hadassah settlement.
A group of 10 settler girls were on the school pathway having a BBQ with a gas cylinder and a burner. A Palestinian Human Rights Worker was filming the situation to gain evidence of settler trespass on school land. The police turned up and told the HRW to stop filming. The HRW was then arrested at 7.30pm on a claim of assaulting a police officer. The police confiscated the HRW’s phone and bundled him into the back of a police van. He was taken to Kiryat Arba police station.
The arrest was caught on film by ISM activists. Attempts were made by adult settlers to prevent filming of the incident. One activist was spat at by a 10 year old settler girl. Four soldiers watched over the group of settler girls, who were making access for Palestinians to their homes difficult.
The army have consistently failed to prevent settler children from from stoning Palestinian kids as they use the pathway. A large presense of international HRW’s is needed daily to insure safe passage to the school. The school was attacked and set on fire on the 6th of August.
The spurious charges against the Palestinian HRW were dropped and he was released at 11pm. The trespass of land by settler girls and their protection by the army and police is further evidence of settlers advance onto Palestinian property and land in Tel Rumeida district, Hebron.
===========================
On Patrol at Qurtuba Girls School, Hebron
Christina Gibb, January 2006
Usually, it is members of the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) who patrol for this school, which takes more people and more time than any other, but sometimes CPT is involved too. To make sure that both teachers and girls are getting through unharmed, there need to be internationals stationed at the top of the road down from the Tel Rumeida settlement, by the metal detector checkpoint, at the foot of the steps, on the track and at the school, for the hour before school and the half hour at the end of school.
Teachers (including pregnant ones) were hit by stones, thrown by settlers who had scrambled up onto the path, before term had even started. This led to all the international groups mustering about 10 people to patrol at the beginning of term. The settlers were outraged at this large non-violent quiet-spoken presence, and the army and police declared a ‘closed military zone’.
EAPPI negotiated with the army and police, who said that they themselves will protect the girls and teachers on their way to and from school every day. But they are not always there at the right times. So EAPPI with help from the rest of us internationals, maintain about four people there, to keep them to their word.
Those in sight of Beit Hadassah settlement need to be fairly inconspicuous, as the settlers consider our presence ‘provocative’. Sometimes the police, conspicuously armed of course, park their jeep at the foot of the steps, so the girls have to almost squeeze past. Soldiers stand on the upper track, weapons at the ready, so the girls look down the barrel of a gun as they walk by.
When I tried to talk to one young soldier – he had no English, and I no Hebrew, but finally I talked to a junior officer in French – he was quite oblivious of what this looked like from a child’s point of view. Though the girls are protected, it makes for a very scary scene.
===========================
Hebron's Theater of the Absurd
by: Kathleen Kern
January - March 1996
The Link - Volume 29, Issue 1
Children Under Siege: Assaults, Bottles, Garbage, and the Flag
September 10 was the first day of school for Palestinian students throughout the West Bank. Since the Israelis had handed over responsibilities for education to the Palestinian Authority over the summer, thousands of schools raised the Palestinian flag for the first time. Two hundred and twenty-one schools in Hebron did so without incident.
But when the flag was raised over Qurtuba school, settlers from Beit Hadassah charged onto the school grounds, seized the flag and burned it. They then attacked the school headmistress, Fariel Abu Haikel, striking her in the chest.
A half hour later, Abu Haikel, several teachers and about 150 students from the school marched to the Palestinian Education Department to make a complaint. As they passed Beit Hadassah, the settlers attacked again. One of the aggressors, an adult male, seized a Palestinian flag from the girls, swung it around and then ran at them with it. A female settler threw glass liter bottles at the girls.
Ten girls were taken in ambulances to the hospital and treated for minor injuries. Many others fainted. The newspaper the next day printed pictures of the girls with eyes rolled up in their heads lying limp in the arms of the men who had rushed to help them.
I thought of the many times I had seen settler boys making slashing motions across their throats when Palestinian children walked past them. I thought of the "Death to the Arabs" graffiti I had seen spray painted in dozens of places around the area of the school. And I concluded that the girls who had fainted thought that the settlers from Beit Hadassah were finally making good on their threats.
At 7.25pm 11.9.07 ISM activists received a phone call saying there was a disturbance outside Qurtuba school. The school is in Tel Rumeida, Hebron opposite the Beit Hadassah settlement.
A group of 10 settler girls were on the school pathway having a BBQ with a gas cylinder and a burner. A Palestinian Human Rights Worker was filming the situation to gain evidence of settler trespass on school land. The police turned up and told the HRW to stop filming. The HRW was then arrested at 7.30pm on a claim of assaulting a police officer. The police confiscated the HRW’s phone and bundled him into the back of a police van. He was taken to Kiryat Arba police station.
The arrest was caught on film by ISM activists. Attempts were made by adult settlers to prevent filming of the incident. One activist was spat at by a 10 year old settler girl. Four soldiers watched over the group of settler girls, who were making access for Palestinians to their homes difficult.
The army have consistently failed to prevent settler children from from stoning Palestinian kids as they use the pathway. A large presense of international HRW’s is needed daily to insure safe passage to the school. The school was attacked and set on fire on the 6th of August.
The spurious charges against the Palestinian HRW were dropped and he was released at 11pm. The trespass of land by settler girls and their protection by the army and police is further evidence of settlers advance onto Palestinian property and land in Tel Rumeida district, Hebron.
===========================
On Patrol at Qurtuba Girls School, Hebron
Christina Gibb, January 2006
Usually, it is members of the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) who patrol for this school, which takes more people and more time than any other, but sometimes CPT is involved too. To make sure that both teachers and girls are getting through unharmed, there need to be internationals stationed at the top of the road down from the Tel Rumeida settlement, by the metal detector checkpoint, at the foot of the steps, on the track and at the school, for the hour before school and the half hour at the end of school.
Teachers (including pregnant ones) were hit by stones, thrown by settlers who had scrambled up onto the path, before term had even started. This led to all the international groups mustering about 10 people to patrol at the beginning of term. The settlers were outraged at this large non-violent quiet-spoken presence, and the army and police declared a ‘closed military zone’.
EAPPI negotiated with the army and police, who said that they themselves will protect the girls and teachers on their way to and from school every day. But they are not always there at the right times. So EAPPI with help from the rest of us internationals, maintain about four people there, to keep them to their word.
Those in sight of Beit Hadassah settlement need to be fairly inconspicuous, as the settlers consider our presence ‘provocative’. Sometimes the police, conspicuously armed of course, park their jeep at the foot of the steps, so the girls have to almost squeeze past. Soldiers stand on the upper track, weapons at the ready, so the girls look down the barrel of a gun as they walk by.
When I tried to talk to one young soldier – he had no English, and I no Hebrew, but finally I talked to a junior officer in French – he was quite oblivious of what this looked like from a child’s point of view. Though the girls are protected, it makes for a very scary scene.
===========================
Hebron's Theater of the Absurd
by: Kathleen Kern
January - March 1996
The Link - Volume 29, Issue 1
Children Under Siege: Assaults, Bottles, Garbage, and the Flag
September 10 was the first day of school for Palestinian students throughout the West Bank. Since the Israelis had handed over responsibilities for education to the Palestinian Authority over the summer, thousands of schools raised the Palestinian flag for the first time. Two hundred and twenty-one schools in Hebron did so without incident.
But when the flag was raised over Qurtuba school, settlers from Beit Hadassah charged onto the school grounds, seized the flag and burned it. They then attacked the school headmistress, Fariel Abu Haikel, striking her in the chest.
A half hour later, Abu Haikel, several teachers and about 150 students from the school marched to the Palestinian Education Department to make a complaint. As they passed Beit Hadassah, the settlers attacked again. One of the aggressors, an adult male, seized a Palestinian flag from the girls, swung it around and then ran at them with it. A female settler threw glass liter bottles at the girls.
Ten girls were taken in ambulances to the hospital and treated for minor injuries. Many others fainted. The newspaper the next day printed pictures of the girls with eyes rolled up in their heads lying limp in the arms of the men who had rushed to help them.
I thought of the many times I had seen settler boys making slashing motions across their throats when Palestinian children walked past them. I thought of the "Death to the Arabs" graffiti I had seen spray painted in dozens of places around the area of the school. And I concluded that the girls who had fainted thought that the settlers from Beit Hadassah were finally making good on their threats.
Saturday, 1 September 2007
Jewish Hebron Market Heir Opposes Settlers
The Jerusalem Post, Tovah Lazaroff, August 26, 2007
The descendent of the Jewish owner of Hebron’s disputed marketplace is left wing, secular and lives in Tel Aviv.
Unlike the Hebron Jews who were forcibly evicted from the marketplace on August 7, retired journalist Haim Hanegbi, 72, does not dream of returning to the city where his family lived for more than 200 years.
There, settlers have placed a large white banner over the empty shops in which they demand: “Return the stolen property.”
They believe that because this marketplace was once owned by Hanegbi’s grandfather, Haim Bejayo, and used by the city’s Jewish community, they have a right to settle the area situated at the entryway to their Avraham Avinu neighborhood.
It’s a claim Hanegbi rejects.
“I have more rights than the settlers and the army,” he told The Jerusalem Post last week.
He wants the marketplace to revert to the Palestinians who made use of it from the 1930s to 1994, when Israel forced them to shut down the shops after Baruch Goldstein, from nearby Kiryat Arba, killed 29 Palestinians as they prayed in a mosque attached to Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs.
For Hanegbi, the issue is greater than the shops that have made headlines over the last month.
He is among a group of 27 descendants of the original Jewish community who believe the government should evacuate all 800 Jewish settlers from Hebron.
“We have to throw them out of Hebron down to the last one,” said Hanegbi.
==============================
Descendants of Hebron’s Jews Say Settlers Don’t Represent Them
WRMEA, 1997
Children and grandchildren of Jews who lived in Hebron before 1948 met with Arab officials in Hebron on Nov. 10 and expressed their solidarity with the estimated 120,000 Arabs who live there. During a meeting with Hebron Mayor Mustafa Natshe, the group’s spokesman, Yosef Ben Yacov Ben Ezra, accused the 450 fanatical settlers in the West Bank city of “smearing the name of the Jews of Hebron” and “harming our relations with our Palestinian neighbors.”
Another member of the group, Haim Hanegbi, whose grandfather was rabbi of the Jewish community in Hebron in 1932, declared that “authentic Hebron Jews have nothing to do with the fanatic settlers who are anti-Arab and anti-peace....We, the Jews of Hebron, declare that only through the people of Hebron, the municipal council and a future Palestinian state, will we be able to recover our rights and reclaim our property in Hebron,” Hanegbi said.
The descendent of the Jewish owner of Hebron’s disputed marketplace is left wing, secular and lives in Tel Aviv.
Unlike the Hebron Jews who were forcibly evicted from the marketplace on August 7, retired journalist Haim Hanegbi, 72, does not dream of returning to the city where his family lived for more than 200 years.
There, settlers have placed a large white banner over the empty shops in which they demand: “Return the stolen property.”
They believe that because this marketplace was once owned by Hanegbi’s grandfather, Haim Bejayo, and used by the city’s Jewish community, they have a right to settle the area situated at the entryway to their Avraham Avinu neighborhood.
It’s a claim Hanegbi rejects.
“I have more rights than the settlers and the army,” he told The Jerusalem Post last week.
He wants the marketplace to revert to the Palestinians who made use of it from the 1930s to 1994, when Israel forced them to shut down the shops after Baruch Goldstein, from nearby Kiryat Arba, killed 29 Palestinians as they prayed in a mosque attached to Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs.
For Hanegbi, the issue is greater than the shops that have made headlines over the last month.
He is among a group of 27 descendants of the original Jewish community who believe the government should evacuate all 800 Jewish settlers from Hebron.
“We have to throw them out of Hebron down to the last one,” said Hanegbi.
==============================
Descendants of Hebron’s Jews Say Settlers Don’t Represent Them
WRMEA, 1997
Children and grandchildren of Jews who lived in Hebron before 1948 met with Arab officials in Hebron on Nov. 10 and expressed their solidarity with the estimated 120,000 Arabs who live there. During a meeting with Hebron Mayor Mustafa Natshe, the group’s spokesman, Yosef Ben Yacov Ben Ezra, accused the 450 fanatical settlers in the West Bank city of “smearing the name of the Jews of Hebron” and “harming our relations with our Palestinian neighbors.”
Another member of the group, Haim Hanegbi, whose grandfather was rabbi of the Jewish community in Hebron in 1932, declared that “authentic Hebron Jews have nothing to do with the fanatic settlers who are anti-Arab and anti-peace....We, the Jews of Hebron, declare that only through the people of Hebron, the municipal council and a future Palestinian state, will we be able to recover our rights and reclaim our property in Hebron,” Hanegbi said.
Thursday, 16 August 2007
The Hebron tactic
Amira Hass - Ha'aretz - 8th August 2007
For about 25 minutes, they behaved liked lords of the land: One man, followed later by a young guy, descended from Mitzpeh Yair, one of the unauthorized outposts in the southern Mt. Hebron area, and prevented a United Nations jeep from traveling. UN directives prohibit leaving the vehicle in such cases, in order to avoid an escalation of friction. And so we, three Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) staffers and two Haaretz journalists, were forced to watch them demonstrate their lordliness from inside the car: The older one blocked the vehicle, in the middle of the unpaved road, with his body. Using hand movements, he ordered the engine shut down. When that didn’t happen, he jumped on the hood and then on the roof and back on the hood, and finally lay back on the windshield and played with the wipers, taking them apart. The driver progressed slowly down the track, and the man leaned back on the windshield with force, until it broke and shards went into the driver’s eyes.
In the meantime, the younger guy appeared. He tried opening the doors of the jeep, screaming, “show me your identity cards” and placing big rocks in front of the wheels. By the time the army and police drove up, the older man yelled at Haaretz photographer Alex Levac: “Go back to where you came from.” When he realized that Levac was a Jew and born in this country, he shouted: “Traitor, going with the UN.” Both the older man and younger guy living at the outpost were born abroad. The younger man, a British citizen, has not yet been given new-immigrant status.
But what does that matter? It also didn’t matter that the soldier described them as “problematic” and that the police are familiar with the older man from previous incidents of harassment. Nor did it matter that the police officers did not believe their absurd story that we had been in their olive grove and that we had tried to run the older man over. The tactic is one that is well-known from Hebron, the same tactic that helped to cleanse the Old City of most of its Palestinian residents: Jews harass and bully and then threaten to lodge complaints against their victims with the Israeli police.
Harassment and sabotage of a much more serious nature than what we experienced has become routine for the Palestinian shepherds and farmers in the area. As a result, about 850 of the 3,500 or so inhabitants of the area known as Masafer Yatta (Yatta’s periphery) have left their habitations, in caves and tent encampments. Sometimes it is their access to water sources that is damaged, sometimes their herds, other times themselves. They have piles of papers attesting to the police complaints they have submitted. Until they stopped filing complaints.
It is easy to blame the two men, or those like them. But they practice terrorizing Palestinians because Israeli authorities let them do so.
In their own way, they do the same thing the “legitimate” occupation authorities do: They drive the Palestinians off their land to make room for Jews. In other words, they are following orders.
About 10 days ago, a Civil Administration inspector impounded a tractor and water tanker belonging to the Hadidyah, a community of farmers and herders in the northern Jordan Valley, as a pressure tactic aimed at getting them to leave their tent encampment on the grounds that it is located in a closed military area. They are one of dozens of communities that have been living in the valley for many decades. Since 1967 the Hadidyah have been displaced four times. Using all sorts of inventive tactics, the occupation authorities have turned these communities into unauthorized residents on their own land.
The springs and wells they used were turned over to the Mekorot Water Company: The water from the national company’s drilling nearby is used by the “legitimate” settlers and its use by the Hadidyah is prohibited. As a result, they have to truck in water from a distant spring. The army has declared large areas of the valley firing zones. They end at the boundaries of the settlements.
The Israeli authorities have refused to rezone land to enable the community to live in the place the elders remember as their childhood home. But the adjacent land has been rezoned for the residence of Jews, Israeli citizens. Now the Civil Administration is hoping that thirst will drive them out of the piece of land allotted to them, which no longer has any land suitable for agriculture or grazing. That is Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians in a nutshell, and talk of peace has not stopped it. The residents of the unauthorized outposts are merely imitating it and receiving both inspiration and protection from it.
For about 25 minutes, they behaved liked lords of the land: One man, followed later by a young guy, descended from Mitzpeh Yair, one of the unauthorized outposts in the southern Mt. Hebron area, and prevented a United Nations jeep from traveling. UN directives prohibit leaving the vehicle in such cases, in order to avoid an escalation of friction. And so we, three Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) staffers and two Haaretz journalists, were forced to watch them demonstrate their lordliness from inside the car: The older one blocked the vehicle, in the middle of the unpaved road, with his body. Using hand movements, he ordered the engine shut down. When that didn’t happen, he jumped on the hood and then on the roof and back on the hood, and finally lay back on the windshield and played with the wipers, taking them apart. The driver progressed slowly down the track, and the man leaned back on the windshield with force, until it broke and shards went into the driver’s eyes.
In the meantime, the younger guy appeared. He tried opening the doors of the jeep, screaming, “show me your identity cards” and placing big rocks in front of the wheels. By the time the army and police drove up, the older man yelled at Haaretz photographer Alex Levac: “Go back to where you came from.” When he realized that Levac was a Jew and born in this country, he shouted: “Traitor, going with the UN.” Both the older man and younger guy living at the outpost were born abroad. The younger man, a British citizen, has not yet been given new-immigrant status.
But what does that matter? It also didn’t matter that the soldier described them as “problematic” and that the police are familiar with the older man from previous incidents of harassment. Nor did it matter that the police officers did not believe their absurd story that we had been in their olive grove and that we had tried to run the older man over. The tactic is one that is well-known from Hebron, the same tactic that helped to cleanse the Old City of most of its Palestinian residents: Jews harass and bully and then threaten to lodge complaints against their victims with the Israeli police.
Harassment and sabotage of a much more serious nature than what we experienced has become routine for the Palestinian shepherds and farmers in the area. As a result, about 850 of the 3,500 or so inhabitants of the area known as Masafer Yatta (Yatta’s periphery) have left their habitations, in caves and tent encampments. Sometimes it is their access to water sources that is damaged, sometimes their herds, other times themselves. They have piles of papers attesting to the police complaints they have submitted. Until they stopped filing complaints.
It is easy to blame the two men, or those like them. But they practice terrorizing Palestinians because Israeli authorities let them do so.
In their own way, they do the same thing the “legitimate” occupation authorities do: They drive the Palestinians off their land to make room for Jews. In other words, they are following orders.
About 10 days ago, a Civil Administration inspector impounded a tractor and water tanker belonging to the Hadidyah, a community of farmers and herders in the northern Jordan Valley, as a pressure tactic aimed at getting them to leave their tent encampment on the grounds that it is located in a closed military area. They are one of dozens of communities that have been living in the valley for many decades. Since 1967 the Hadidyah have been displaced four times. Using all sorts of inventive tactics, the occupation authorities have turned these communities into unauthorized residents on their own land.
The springs and wells they used were turned over to the Mekorot Water Company: The water from the national company’s drilling nearby is used by the “legitimate” settlers and its use by the Hadidyah is prohibited. As a result, they have to truck in water from a distant spring. The army has declared large areas of the valley firing zones. They end at the boundaries of the settlements.
The Israeli authorities have refused to rezone land to enable the community to live in the place the elders remember as their childhood home. But the adjacent land has been rezoned for the residence of Jews, Israeli citizens. Now the Civil Administration is hoping that thirst will drive them out of the piece of land allotted to them, which no longer has any land suitable for agriculture or grazing. That is Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians in a nutshell, and talk of peace has not stopped it. The residents of the unauthorized outposts are merely imitating it and receiving both inspiration and protection from it.
Hebron store owner: Eviction was a façade
Ali Waked - YNet - 8th August, 2007
Owner of one of stores in city's wholesale market invaded by Jewish families tells Ynet evacuation will not change a thing: 'Everything that took place there was mainly meant for the cameras, but there were no clashes. The army and the settlers have the same goal'
"The so-called clashes between the IDF and the settlers are one big façade," Ziad Sarsur, the owner of one of the two stores taken over by Jewish families in Hebron's wholesale market, told Ynet on Wednesday.
The evacuation of the two families and hundreds of right-wing activists was completed by large police and Border Guard forces on Tuesday morning.
"Yesterday the merchants and I saw the commotion on television and laughed. What a poor and unsuccessful façade," Sarsur said. "Everyone knows that the army and the State of Israel and the settlers all do the same thing.
"One settler walks down the street accompanied by two jeeps, so how will they suddenly clash? The settlers are also much stronger and more influential than the army and I have no doubt that they will reinvade our businesses."
In 1993, after the massacre carried out by Baruch Goldstein against Muslim worshippers at the Cave of the Patriarchs, Sarsur and hundreds of other Palestinian merchants were removed from their businesses and stores in the wholesale market.
Now, as far as he is concerned, the evacuation of Jewish families from the areas is meaningless.
"Whether the settlers are inside the market or were evacuated from it – I don't see a difference, because I cannot return to my business and my store. I have been expelled for more than 13 years. In order to enter the street where the business is located – not the business itself, but only the street – I have to coordinate with the Israeli side, and even then they don't give us permits."
According to Sarsur, before the settlers invaded the market he had approached the army and asked to take some of his belongings, but was turned down.
A day after the eviction, Sarsur recalled how he and his friends were evicted after the 1992 massacre.
"I was evacuated from a business which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, from which I would distribute fruit and vegetables to many stores in Hebron," he said.
"No one thought about providing us with an alternative or compensating us. The family lives of dozens of people depended on this business, and in one day we found ourselves on the street without any livelihood."
A number of High Court discussions did not convince the State to let the Palestinian merchants return to their businesses and homes in the wholesale market area.
Months after he was evacuated from his business, Sarsur paid 86,000 Jordanian dinars (about $120,000) and opened a store in the alternative market built by the Hebron municipality. He is still there, waiting for the day he will be allowed to return to the old market.
Soldiers and settlers together, on same road
"The funniest thing is the talks about large army and police forces arriving to prevent the settlers from reaching the confrontation area," Sarsur said, in reference to Tuesday's evacuation. "Whoever says that is either lying or did not see what went on here.
"Soldiers and settlers walked down the same road and street together. Everything that happened there was mainly for the cameras, but in practice there were no clashes. Both the army and the settlers have the same goal, which is to rob the Palestinians of their property.
Abdel Hadi Hantash of the Palestinian Land Defense Committee in Hebron said that disagreement is over the identity of the houses' rightful owners.
"The truth is that all these houses and stores are Palestinian property with documents, and therefore what happened yesterday is ridiculous. Two thieves arguing over who the property belongs to. This is an argument which is a façade, and by no means an evacuation, because the settlers' presence is illegal," he said.
Palestinians sources reported that not far from the scene of Tuesday's clashes there were at least another 10 Jewish families living in stores and houses they had taken over in the area.
"One or two places are enough for a façade. They don't need a set around every 10 stores, although I know there are at least 30 such stores and houses," a local Palestinian activist said.
======================================
Jacky Rowland from Al Jazeera English reports on the eviction of some settlers in Hebron - August 7, 2007
======================================
Hebron: Reflection on Reportage of an Eviction in Hebron
Kathie Uhler, 10 August 2007
What is profoundly unsettling for me is the exaggeration of the need for military and other security personnel, of the numbers of such personnel reputedly present, aswell as of the numbers of activists and protestors, and of their reputed violence.
What is to be gained by all this hype?
What is even more disturbing, however, is the minimizing in the Israeli and other presses of the real violence of Israeli citizens, both settlers and security personnel, against Palestinians and internationals, that I and other CPTers have witnessed and endured each day, and increasingly so in recent days.
Ten masked teenaged Israelis attacked one Palestinian in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood of Hebron on 5 August, for example. Again, Israeli settlers beat two international volunteers at the Palestinian house illegally occupied by squatters in March 2007 that they named, "Beit Shalom," on 6 August while Israeli soldiers stood and watched.
The ongoing violence of squatting in a Palestinian neighborhood is itself another egregious example of Israeli minimizing and supporting crimes against humanity justified under the banner of self-produced security needs in an occupation that has gone bad.
The reportage of an event, like the eviction of the Israeli settlers in the market place, leads one to believe that the Israeli government staged it for political purposes.
Owner of one of stores in city's wholesale market invaded by Jewish families tells Ynet evacuation will not change a thing: 'Everything that took place there was mainly meant for the cameras, but there were no clashes. The army and the settlers have the same goal'
"The so-called clashes between the IDF and the settlers are one big façade," Ziad Sarsur, the owner of one of the two stores taken over by Jewish families in Hebron's wholesale market, told Ynet on Wednesday.
The evacuation of the two families and hundreds of right-wing activists was completed by large police and Border Guard forces on Tuesday morning.
"Yesterday the merchants and I saw the commotion on television and laughed. What a poor and unsuccessful façade," Sarsur said. "Everyone knows that the army and the State of Israel and the settlers all do the same thing.
"One settler walks down the street accompanied by two jeeps, so how will they suddenly clash? The settlers are also much stronger and more influential than the army and I have no doubt that they will reinvade our businesses."
In 1993, after the massacre carried out by Baruch Goldstein against Muslim worshippers at the Cave of the Patriarchs, Sarsur and hundreds of other Palestinian merchants were removed from their businesses and stores in the wholesale market.
Now, as far as he is concerned, the evacuation of Jewish families from the areas is meaningless.
"Whether the settlers are inside the market or were evacuated from it – I don't see a difference, because I cannot return to my business and my store. I have been expelled for more than 13 years. In order to enter the street where the business is located – not the business itself, but only the street – I have to coordinate with the Israeli side, and even then they don't give us permits."
According to Sarsur, before the settlers invaded the market he had approached the army and asked to take some of his belongings, but was turned down.
A day after the eviction, Sarsur recalled how he and his friends were evicted after the 1992 massacre.
"I was evacuated from a business which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, from which I would distribute fruit and vegetables to many stores in Hebron," he said.
"No one thought about providing us with an alternative or compensating us. The family lives of dozens of people depended on this business, and in one day we found ourselves on the street without any livelihood."
A number of High Court discussions did not convince the State to let the Palestinian merchants return to their businesses and homes in the wholesale market area.
Months after he was evacuated from his business, Sarsur paid 86,000 Jordanian dinars (about $120,000) and opened a store in the alternative market built by the Hebron municipality. He is still there, waiting for the day he will be allowed to return to the old market.
Soldiers and settlers together, on same road
"The funniest thing is the talks about large army and police forces arriving to prevent the settlers from reaching the confrontation area," Sarsur said, in reference to Tuesday's evacuation. "Whoever says that is either lying or did not see what went on here.
"Soldiers and settlers walked down the same road and street together. Everything that happened there was mainly for the cameras, but in practice there were no clashes. Both the army and the settlers have the same goal, which is to rob the Palestinians of their property.
Abdel Hadi Hantash of the Palestinian Land Defense Committee in Hebron said that disagreement is over the identity of the houses' rightful owners.
"The truth is that all these houses and stores are Palestinian property with documents, and therefore what happened yesterday is ridiculous. Two thieves arguing over who the property belongs to. This is an argument which is a façade, and by no means an evacuation, because the settlers' presence is illegal," he said.
Palestinians sources reported that not far from the scene of Tuesday's clashes there were at least another 10 Jewish families living in stores and houses they had taken over in the area.
"One or two places are enough for a façade. They don't need a set around every 10 stores, although I know there are at least 30 such stores and houses," a local Palestinian activist said.
======================================
Jacky Rowland from Al Jazeera English reports on the eviction of some settlers in Hebron - August 7, 2007
======================================
Hebron: Reflection on Reportage of an Eviction in Hebron
Kathie Uhler, 10 August 2007
What is profoundly unsettling for me is the exaggeration of the need for military and other security personnel, of the numbers of such personnel reputedly present, aswell as of the numbers of activists and protestors, and of their reputed violence.
What is to be gained by all this hype?
What is even more disturbing, however, is the minimizing in the Israeli and other presses of the real violence of Israeli citizens, both settlers and security personnel, against Palestinians and internationals, that I and other CPTers have witnessed and endured each day, and increasingly so in recent days.
Ten masked teenaged Israelis attacked one Palestinian in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood of Hebron on 5 August, for example. Again, Israeli settlers beat two international volunteers at the Palestinian house illegally occupied by squatters in March 2007 that they named, "Beit Shalom," on 6 August while Israeli soldiers stood and watched.
The ongoing violence of squatting in a Palestinian neighborhood is itself another egregious example of Israeli minimizing and supporting crimes against humanity justified under the banner of self-produced security needs in an occupation that has gone bad.
The reportage of an event, like the eviction of the Israeli settlers in the market place, leads one to believe that the Israeli government staged it for political purposes.
Wednesday, 18 July 2007
VIDEO: Israeli intimidation in Hebron
David Chater, Al Jazeera English, 14 July 2007
An intentional policy of legal and physical segregation by Israeli authorities is being imposed in the name of security for Israeli settlers in Hebron.
But the systematic harrassment of Palestinians by settlers and an ever-tightening military clampdown has resulted in what Hebron's Palestinian community is calling "ethnic cleansing".
Monday, 25 June 2007
Soldier threatens left-wing activist; in a rare move, court decides to charge soldier
YNet: "We will kill you and castrate you!"
June 19th, 2007
Hanan Greenberg
'We'll kill you and castrate you,' threatened an IDF soldier in a phone call to a left-wing activist who takes part in controversial protests against army checkpoints.
Soldier now facing court martial
Tensions between IDF troops and left-wing activists who hold demonstrations at military checkpoints in the West Bank may culminate in an extended arrest of an IDF soldier.
The soldier, frustrated with the activists who routinely interfere with the operations at the checkpoint, decided to take matters into his own hands.
The soldier reportedly made seven phone calls to one of the activists, cursing him and telling him to stay away from the village where the soldier and his unit were operating.
The caller identified himself as "the soldier from Susia (an Israeli settlement located south of Hebron)," and repeatedly cursed the activist.
The activist filed a formal complaint about the harassment and the military prosecution, in a rare move, decided to charge the soldier at the Jaffa Military Court.
If convicted, the soldier will be marked as a criminal felon, even after he is discharged.
According to the charges the soldier told the activist: "When you come to the village of Tawana (a Palestinian village near Hebron) we will kill you, castrate you and take you down."
Following the complaint a military police investigation was launched. Due to the severity of the case the military prosecution decided taking disciplinary action against the soldier would not suffice and a court martial was recommended.
The decision was met with surprise by the military advocacy. "This is a very strange indictment, this is not a case of serial or continuing harassment but rather a phone call that only lasted several minutes," said a military defense attorney.
"The circumstances surrounding the soldier's actions are centered around the unhinged behavior of the left-wing activist against IDF soldiers, including an attempt to run over a soldier and members of his unit at one of the military's checkpoints," he said.
The soldier's defense team said it would try to convince the military prosecution to revert to a disciplinary proceeding.
Experts who reviewed the case noted that the activists is well known to the Hebron police and he has been labeled as an extremist who frequently lodges complaints against IDF soldiers and provokes conflicts between Jewish and Palestinian residents.
Just several weeks ago the clash between IDF troops and leftists in the area came to blows when reserve soldiers were documented hitting activists who were rioting near a checkpoint. No soldiers were prosecuted after that incident and the Head of the Central Command ordered the soldiers and their commanders keep their posts.
June 19th, 2007
Hanan Greenberg
'We'll kill you and castrate you,' threatened an IDF soldier in a phone call to a left-wing activist who takes part in controversial protests against army checkpoints.
Soldier now facing court martial
Tensions between IDF troops and left-wing activists who hold demonstrations at military checkpoints in the West Bank may culminate in an extended arrest of an IDF soldier.
The soldier, frustrated with the activists who routinely interfere with the operations at the checkpoint, decided to take matters into his own hands.
The soldier reportedly made seven phone calls to one of the activists, cursing him and telling him to stay away from the village where the soldier and his unit were operating.
The caller identified himself as "the soldier from Susia (an Israeli settlement located south of Hebron)," and repeatedly cursed the activist.
The activist filed a formal complaint about the harassment and the military prosecution, in a rare move, decided to charge the soldier at the Jaffa Military Court.
If convicted, the soldier will be marked as a criminal felon, even after he is discharged.
According to the charges the soldier told the activist: "When you come to the village of Tawana (a Palestinian village near Hebron) we will kill you, castrate you and take you down."
Following the complaint a military police investigation was launched. Due to the severity of the case the military prosecution decided taking disciplinary action against the soldier would not suffice and a court martial was recommended.
The decision was met with surprise by the military advocacy. "This is a very strange indictment, this is not a case of serial or continuing harassment but rather a phone call that only lasted several minutes," said a military defense attorney.
"The circumstances surrounding the soldier's actions are centered around the unhinged behavior of the left-wing activist against IDF soldiers, including an attempt to run over a soldier and members of his unit at one of the military's checkpoints," he said.
The soldier's defense team said it would try to convince the military prosecution to revert to a disciplinary proceeding.
Experts who reviewed the case noted that the activists is well known to the Hebron police and he has been labeled as an extremist who frequently lodges complaints against IDF soldiers and provokes conflicts between Jewish and Palestinian residents.
Just several weeks ago the clash between IDF troops and leftists in the area came to blows when reserve soldiers were documented hitting activists who were rioting near a checkpoint. No soldiers were prosecuted after that incident and the Head of the Central Command ordered the soldiers and their commanders keep their posts.
Aussie grandmother risks violence on Hebron streets
The Melbourne Anglican
Beryl Rule - Monday, June 4, 2007
Although “a grandmother in her mid-70’s” no longer conjures up an image of shawls and rocking-chairs, it is not likely to evoke the picture of a woman putting herself at risk in a West Bank hotspot. But if Mary Baxter happens to be the grandmother under discussion, that second image is the accurate one. The clergy widow and retired applied statistics professor has spent a total of 12 months in Hebron during the last three years, acting as a human rights observer and trying to shield Palestinian children from intimidation by hostile Israeli settlers.
Mary’s first visit to Israel was in 1977, for an ecology conference. Returning with her husband on a clergy tour 10 years later she was disturbed to see that churches had been boarded up, Christians moved out, and there were threatening groups of Israeli youths roaming the streets.
During her husband’s period as a locum in Damascus, the following year, they were horrified to see on television that Palestinians were being bashed by rifle butts. Their awareness of problems increased when the then Bishop of Jerusalem said he wanted Australian nurses for the hospitals, because they could serve as independent witnesses against the violence being done to Palestinians.
After her husband’s death Mary continued to take a close interest in the sufferings of the Palestinian people and to try to find an organization which could help her to return to Israel. A sermon by Archdeacon Barry Smith, her parish priest, triggered the decision to go anyway. So in 2004, armed only with an AngliCORD brief to visit some Anglican Hospitals, she set off.
“I visited the hospitals and the David Penman Medical Centre, and I also attended three demonstrations against Israel’s security barrier in Budrus and Beit Awwa, but I realised I was too old for demonstrations – I wasn’t quick enough over the rough ground!” Mary admitted, adding that speed is essential when you are running from tear gas and rubber bullets!
Accordingly, when she returned in September 2005, she had a different role: as a volunteer human rights observer with International Solidarity, a non-violent organization, in the Israeli controlled section of Hebron. The Palestinian population there is 3,500; Jewish settlers number 500, but they are “passionate and aggressive”, Mary explained, and protected by the troops.
Palestinian children on their way to and from school are frequently harassed by the settlers, and the Israeli soldiers ignore their plight. Mary has made it her particular brief to try to make friends with the soldiers and ask for help when the children are being threatened. She personally accompanies children – although she is not supposed to do this – if no other protection is forthcoming.
“I come out of my house when the children are going to school, at seven in the morning, and again from one to two in the afternoon, when they are going home. Settler women and children throw stones at them and push them, and won’t let them past. It’s very traumatic for the Palestinian kids, and if I walk with them the settlers complain to the soldiers about me. These young soldiers – 18 and 19 year olds – are in Hebron for three months at a time to protect the settlers. They often have nothing to do and are very bored, and they hate it. They like to talk. I have worked with young men all my life and I like them. They remind me of the engineering students I taught; I can relate to them and see the kid inside the uniform. I treat them like grand-children. Most Internationals come and go but I have been around the longest, so I am known. I had the last batch of soldiers co-operating really well. And I can get away with more than others because of my age. I have come between a soldier and an elderly Palestinian man he was about to hit – but I was only able to do this because I liked the soldier as well as the old man.
“You have to use your judgement. It can be dangerous. When I see a group of young fundamentalist men out looking for trouble I watch them like a hawk, and make for a soldier if they approach. One of those groups smashed a bottle into a Swedish girl’s face.”Mary herself has been spat at by settlers, verbally abused and had rocks thrown at her.
Currently in Melbourne, she hopes to return to Hebron in July.“I know what I am doing is just a drop in the bucket,” she admitted, “but I see it as being able, every day, to give some hope to a small group of people.”
But why Hebron, we asked? After all, the world is full of good causes, many of them much closer to home.
For Mary, the answer to that is simple.
“God said to go there,” she replied, “and it feels so right.”
Beryl Rule - Monday, June 4, 2007
Although “a grandmother in her mid-70’s” no longer conjures up an image of shawls and rocking-chairs, it is not likely to evoke the picture of a woman putting herself at risk in a West Bank hotspot. But if Mary Baxter happens to be the grandmother under discussion, that second image is the accurate one. The clergy widow and retired applied statistics professor has spent a total of 12 months in Hebron during the last three years, acting as a human rights observer and trying to shield Palestinian children from intimidation by hostile Israeli settlers.
Mary’s first visit to Israel was in 1977, for an ecology conference. Returning with her husband on a clergy tour 10 years later she was disturbed to see that churches had been boarded up, Christians moved out, and there were threatening groups of Israeli youths roaming the streets.
During her husband’s period as a locum in Damascus, the following year, they were horrified to see on television that Palestinians were being bashed by rifle butts. Their awareness of problems increased when the then Bishop of Jerusalem said he wanted Australian nurses for the hospitals, because they could serve as independent witnesses against the violence being done to Palestinians.
After her husband’s death Mary continued to take a close interest in the sufferings of the Palestinian people and to try to find an organization which could help her to return to Israel. A sermon by Archdeacon Barry Smith, her parish priest, triggered the decision to go anyway. So in 2004, armed only with an AngliCORD brief to visit some Anglican Hospitals, she set off.
“I visited the hospitals and the David Penman Medical Centre, and I also attended three demonstrations against Israel’s security barrier in Budrus and Beit Awwa, but I realised I was too old for demonstrations – I wasn’t quick enough over the rough ground!” Mary admitted, adding that speed is essential when you are running from tear gas and rubber bullets!
Accordingly, when she returned in September 2005, she had a different role: as a volunteer human rights observer with International Solidarity, a non-violent organization, in the Israeli controlled section of Hebron. The Palestinian population there is 3,500; Jewish settlers number 500, but they are “passionate and aggressive”, Mary explained, and protected by the troops.
Palestinian children on their way to and from school are frequently harassed by the settlers, and the Israeli soldiers ignore their plight. Mary has made it her particular brief to try to make friends with the soldiers and ask for help when the children are being threatened. She personally accompanies children – although she is not supposed to do this – if no other protection is forthcoming.
“I come out of my house when the children are going to school, at seven in the morning, and again from one to two in the afternoon, when they are going home. Settler women and children throw stones at them and push them, and won’t let them past. It’s very traumatic for the Palestinian kids, and if I walk with them the settlers complain to the soldiers about me. These young soldiers – 18 and 19 year olds – are in Hebron for three months at a time to protect the settlers. They often have nothing to do and are very bored, and they hate it. They like to talk. I have worked with young men all my life and I like them. They remind me of the engineering students I taught; I can relate to them and see the kid inside the uniform. I treat them like grand-children. Most Internationals come and go but I have been around the longest, so I am known. I had the last batch of soldiers co-operating really well. And I can get away with more than others because of my age. I have come between a soldier and an elderly Palestinian man he was about to hit – but I was only able to do this because I liked the soldier as well as the old man.
“You have to use your judgement. It can be dangerous. When I see a group of young fundamentalist men out looking for trouble I watch them like a hawk, and make for a soldier if they approach. One of those groups smashed a bottle into a Swedish girl’s face.”Mary herself has been spat at by settlers, verbally abused and had rocks thrown at her.
Currently in Melbourne, she hopes to return to Hebron in July.“I know what I am doing is just a drop in the bucket,” she admitted, “but I see it as being able, every day, to give some hope to a small group of people.”
But why Hebron, we asked? After all, the world is full of good causes, many of them much closer to home.
For Mary, the answer to that is simple.
“God said to go there,” she replied, “and it feels so right.”
Al Jazeera: The Depopulation of Hebron
June 20, 2007
Sami Zeidan reports on the depopulation of Hebron.
The population of Hebron's old market area has decreased by 80% in a decade.
Sami Zeidan reports on the depopulation of Hebron.
The population of Hebron's old market area has decreased by 80% in a decade.
Sunday, 24 June 2007
Lisa Taraki: 'We are under siege'
Wednesday June 20, 2007
Conal Urquhart reports from Bir Zeit University on the West Bank, where moves to discuss an academic boycott of Israel have been welcomed.
EducationGuardian.co.uk
Lisa Taraki, dean of graduate studies at Bir Zeit University, is puzzled by the uproar caused by the University and College Union's decision to discuss a boycott of Israeli academics.
"There has been a great hue and cry about the academic freedom of Israelis as if the academic freedom of Palestinians is of no consequence. The Israelis are not interested in academic freedom, they are interested in the protection of their own privileges," she said.
She has taught at the institution for 30 years and cannot remember a time when Israel did anything but try to suppress Palestinian education.
"We have been under siege for more than 30 years. In spite of this we have managed to build a credible institution," she said.
Bir Zeit was founded as a girls' school in 1924, but started offering degrees 50 years later. The university's students became regular protesters against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and the small peaceful countryside campus was often showered with stones and sprayed with tear gas as the army tried to crack down on peaceful dissent.
Ms Taraki said that until the 1990s, the university was regularly closed by military order. "Bir Zeit was always a target for the army.
"There would be a demonstration against the occupation, the army would come and there would be clashes. They would close the university, for a few weeks, a few months and on one occasion four years. The president was exiled for 19 years because the army accused him of inciting students," she said.
"When the university was closed we did our best to continue. We held classes in Ramallah and Jerusalem. Thousands of students were arrested or put under town arrest or house arrest. So we would try and teach them in their homes or towns. For some, degrees took 10 years to complete."
Bir Zeit sits on a hill above terraced valleys full of olive trees, outside Ramallah. It is much smaller than its Israeli counterparts but it has a similar buzz on its public spaces as students move between lectures or eat lunch in the sun.
The air of normality is deceptive. Many students have to spend more than half their day travelling to ensure they do not miss classes, and at every checkpoint there is the possibility, particularly for male students, that they will be randomly arrested.
"I have postgraduate students from Hebron. They leave their homes at 8am to get here in time for a 2pm class. The class finishes at 5pm and they get home around 10pm. The journey should only be one hour each way," said Ms Taraki.
Undergraduates stay close to the university if they can, which adds an extra financial burden, but most students are restricted to going to the university closest to them. Students from Gaza are banned from going to the West Bank although there are many subjects that are not taught at Gazan universities.
"Bir Zeit used to have a very diverse student body with students from all over the West Bank and Gaza. Now most students come from the immediate area. This means the national character of the university is compromised. We do not want it be a local institution," said Ms Taraki.
The restriction on movement means that universities cannot act as cultural centres as the majority of the population do not have the time and freedom to travel from one city to the next to hear a lecture or see a film. Even short journeys of 40 minutes require a special permit from the Israeli army, which can take hours to acquire.
As a result of the wars of 1948 and 1967 and 40 years of Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, there is a large Palestinian diaspora all over the world. Many of the buildings in these areas were funded by expatriate Palestinians and the diaspora is a potential pool of students and teachers for Bir Zeit.
However, Israel is reluctant to allow expatriate Palestinians to return if only for a short time.
Many are denied entry at the airport, while others are restricted to a three-month tourist visa, which can only be renewed by leaving and re-entering Israel - at which point they could be denied entry.
An annual course at Bir Zeit for expatriate Palestinians in Palestinian culture and Arabic is normally attended by only half the students who subscribed for the course because of Israeli border restrictions.
Omar Qassis, a 22-year-old sociology student, said that the main problem for him was movement and the threat of arrest.
"Thirteen of my friends have been arrested. I was locked up for ten days after I was arrested at a checkpoint on the way to my final exams in 2005. I was told I was a suspect but nothing else," he said. "On the fourth day, I was brought to court where the judge was told they had nothing against me but they wanted to detain me while they continued their checks. I was then released on the tenth day but I had missed my exams and had to do another term."
The idea of a boycott of Israeli institutions is broadly supported by Palestinians, who are grateful that people in the international community are taking an interest in their plight.
Mira Dabit, 22, a student of psychology and sociology, said: "Everything else has failed. United Nations resolutions. Negotiation. A boycott is a last resort but it gets people talking about our situation and gives the world a chance to find out what is going on."
Ms Taraki has little time for the complaints from her Israeli counterparts about the prospect of a boycott. "Where have these presidents been for the last three decades when our academic freedom has been trampled on every day? The claim that Israeli academics are at the forefront of disputing government policy is very hollow indeed. There has been a handful of academics who have supported the Palestinians but only a handful," she said.
The main benefit of a boycott is not that it will provide equality of suffering but that it will provoke debate, she says.
"We are hopeful that during this year of discussion we will be able to speak at British universities and explain how we have been boycotted and besieged for the last 30 years," said Ms Taraki.
Conal Urquhart reports from Bir Zeit University on the West Bank, where moves to discuss an academic boycott of Israel have been welcomed.
EducationGuardian.co.uk
Lisa Taraki, dean of graduate studies at Bir Zeit University, is puzzled by the uproar caused by the University and College Union's decision to discuss a boycott of Israeli academics.
"There has been a great hue and cry about the academic freedom of Israelis as if the academic freedom of Palestinians is of no consequence. The Israelis are not interested in academic freedom, they are interested in the protection of their own privileges," she said.
She has taught at the institution for 30 years and cannot remember a time when Israel did anything but try to suppress Palestinian education.
"We have been under siege for more than 30 years. In spite of this we have managed to build a credible institution," she said.
Bir Zeit was founded as a girls' school in 1924, but started offering degrees 50 years later. The university's students became regular protesters against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and the small peaceful countryside campus was often showered with stones and sprayed with tear gas as the army tried to crack down on peaceful dissent.
Ms Taraki said that until the 1990s, the university was regularly closed by military order. "Bir Zeit was always a target for the army.
"There would be a demonstration against the occupation, the army would come and there would be clashes. They would close the university, for a few weeks, a few months and on one occasion four years. The president was exiled for 19 years because the army accused him of inciting students," she said.
"When the university was closed we did our best to continue. We held classes in Ramallah and Jerusalem. Thousands of students were arrested or put under town arrest or house arrest. So we would try and teach them in their homes or towns. For some, degrees took 10 years to complete."
Bir Zeit sits on a hill above terraced valleys full of olive trees, outside Ramallah. It is much smaller than its Israeli counterparts but it has a similar buzz on its public spaces as students move between lectures or eat lunch in the sun.
The air of normality is deceptive. Many students have to spend more than half their day travelling to ensure they do not miss classes, and at every checkpoint there is the possibility, particularly for male students, that they will be randomly arrested.
"I have postgraduate students from Hebron. They leave their homes at 8am to get here in time for a 2pm class. The class finishes at 5pm and they get home around 10pm. The journey should only be one hour each way," said Ms Taraki.
Undergraduates stay close to the university if they can, which adds an extra financial burden, but most students are restricted to going to the university closest to them. Students from Gaza are banned from going to the West Bank although there are many subjects that are not taught at Gazan universities.
"Bir Zeit used to have a very diverse student body with students from all over the West Bank and Gaza. Now most students come from the immediate area. This means the national character of the university is compromised. We do not want it be a local institution," said Ms Taraki.
The restriction on movement means that universities cannot act as cultural centres as the majority of the population do not have the time and freedom to travel from one city to the next to hear a lecture or see a film. Even short journeys of 40 minutes require a special permit from the Israeli army, which can take hours to acquire.
As a result of the wars of 1948 and 1967 and 40 years of Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, there is a large Palestinian diaspora all over the world. Many of the buildings in these areas were funded by expatriate Palestinians and the diaspora is a potential pool of students and teachers for Bir Zeit.
However, Israel is reluctant to allow expatriate Palestinians to return if only for a short time.
Many are denied entry at the airport, while others are restricted to a three-month tourist visa, which can only be renewed by leaving and re-entering Israel - at which point they could be denied entry.
An annual course at Bir Zeit for expatriate Palestinians in Palestinian culture and Arabic is normally attended by only half the students who subscribed for the course because of Israeli border restrictions.
Omar Qassis, a 22-year-old sociology student, said that the main problem for him was movement and the threat of arrest.
"Thirteen of my friends have been arrested. I was locked up for ten days after I was arrested at a checkpoint on the way to my final exams in 2005. I was told I was a suspect but nothing else," he said. "On the fourth day, I was brought to court where the judge was told they had nothing against me but they wanted to detain me while they continued their checks. I was then released on the tenth day but I had missed my exams and had to do another term."
The idea of a boycott of Israeli institutions is broadly supported by Palestinians, who are grateful that people in the international community are taking an interest in their plight.
Mira Dabit, 22, a student of psychology and sociology, said: "Everything else has failed. United Nations resolutions. Negotiation. A boycott is a last resort but it gets people talking about our situation and gives the world a chance to find out what is going on."
Ms Taraki has little time for the complaints from her Israeli counterparts about the prospect of a boycott. "Where have these presidents been for the last three decades when our academic freedom has been trampled on every day? The claim that Israeli academics are at the forefront of disputing government policy is very hollow indeed. There has been a handful of academics who have supported the Palestinians but only a handful," she said.
The main benefit of a boycott is not that it will provide equality of suffering but that it will provoke debate, she says.
"We are hopeful that during this year of discussion we will be able to speak at British universities and explain how we have been boycotted and besieged for the last 30 years," said Ms Taraki.
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