My first settler attack

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1.Bil'in resists the Annexation Wall- two reports and an invitation

Today, Thursday the 21st of April, the youth of Bil'in village demonstrated against
the Annexation Wall.

At 11:30 approximately 150 people, including Palestinians, international, and
Israeli activists marched out of the village and towards the construction site of
the wall. Today is a holiday in Palestine (Prophet Mohammad's birthday) and there
was no school so many children attended the demonstration.

We reached the construction site at approximately 11:45 and began to chant against
the Wall. There were four soldiers at the site. They told us that we could continue
to demonstrate legally as long as there was no stone throwing. A few minutes after
telling us this, reinforcements arrived and they declared the area a closed military
zone. There had been no stone throwing. They ordered us to leave and started
throwing sound grenades into the crowd.

One soldier then fired a rubber bullet at a group of shebab (youth in Arabic) about
30 meters from the main group. We began to withdraw from the construction area.

The soldiers fired a few canisters of tear gas at demonstrators. After this they
began to fire metal rubber coated bullets almost exclusively. Despite the fact that
this was a school children's demonstration metal rubber coated bullets continued to
be used for the rest of the day.

At about 2PM an Israeli activist was shot in the stomach with a rubber bullet while
walking backwards away from the soldiers with his hands in the air.

An hour later the army entered the other side of the village and drove through the
village toward the wall construction site. As the jeep drove through the village and
past a group of Israeli and international activists a soldier shot through the gun
port of the jeep into the village.

At about 4:30 the army entered the village and arrested one Palestinian. He was
de-arrested by Israeli and international activists. While escaping from the soldiers
he jumped over a 5meter cliff and was injured. He was taken to the hospital by the
Red Crescent ambulance.

Nine Palestinians, two journalists and one Israeli activist were injured in today’s
demonstration. Most were shot with metal coated rubber bullets.

The soldiers consistently endangered the lives of villagers by shooting into the
village.

Bil'in will have another demonstration tomorrow at 1:00 PM to protest the
construction of the Wall.

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Today Friday the 22nd the village of Bil'in held a demonstration to protest the
construction of the Apartheid Wall.

At about 1:30 150 people including Palestinians, Israelis and international
activists departed from in front of the village mosque to the construction site of
the fence.

We arrived at the construction site at about 1:45 and were met by three Israeli
soldiers who told us the area was a closed military zone.

We continued the march and stopped under an olive tree next to the planned route of
the Wall. For about 15 minutes we chanted slogans under the olive tree.

More soldiers began to arrive. The army tried to prevent people from filming what
was happening by pushing away photographers and demanding that they leave the area.

We started to walk down the planned route of the Wall. The soldiers grew
increasingly agitated and tried to stop us from walking to the area where bulldozers
have already destroyed the land.

While we were standing on the destroyed land the army arrested one Israeli. At first
he was successfully de-arrested by Israeli and international activists but the army
promised that if he would talk with them he would be released.

The army also tried to stop the press from photographing their behavior by placing
their hands in front of their lenses.

The soldiers soon began shooting at demonstrators. They mostly used rubber bullets
and some tear gas.

Israeli and international activists tried to change the situation by moving between
the Palestinian demonstrators and the Israeli soldiers.

The soldiers ordered us to leave and then moved among us to try to use us as shields
while they fired at demonstrators. The activists left the area.

When we returned to observe what was happening the soldiers fired rubber bullets at
us while we stood unarmed in plain sight on a road. It was clear that we were not a
threat in any way. They also fired many times at a Palestinian who was filming the
demonstration.

Near the end of the demonstration the army began to fire live ammunition.

When the army withdrew the demonstrators went to the construction site of the Wall,
and many Palestinians held prayer on the land where their olive trees once grew.

Five Palestinians were injured today and one Israeli activist was arrested.

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2. From slavery to freedom - from separation to partnership

Demonstration with the people of Bil'in against the settlements and the fence that
are being built on their lands.

The coming Wednesday. The Passover weekdays. Israeli and international activists
will join the people of the village Bil'in near Ramallah, for a nonviolent
demonstration protesting against the annexation fence and the settlements who will
annex more than half of Bili'n's land (about 2,300 Dunam - 575 acres).

Intensive building works are being done, in the area between the route of the fence,
to the green line at the West -as part of the expanding of the settlements Kiryat
Sefer, Eastern Matityahu, and the town Modi'in Elit.

Together with the inhabitants of Bil'in - men and women, we will protest loudly
against the expanding of the settlement, the building the fence, and the
jeopardizing the option for life together.

We will also plant olive trees along the planned route of the fence.

In the recent past the majority of the 1500 working people in Bil'in earned their
living working in Israel. These days, due to the complete closure that has been
imposed over the last five years the village economy is based more on agriculture,
and the unemployment rate is very high.

Since the high court of justice dismissed the complaint of the inhabitants of Bil'in
against the new route of the fence which was ratified by the government, the village
started a nonviolent struggle against the fence.

Nearly daily, the people of Bil'in are marching towards the route of the fence
trying to stop the work of the bulldozers, which are uprooting the olive trees and
separating between them and their lands.

Like in the neighboring village Budrus, so in Bil'in, the army tries to suppress
violently the popular struggle of the village. Among other atrocities, the soldiers
invade the village days and nights, shooting metal rubber coated bullets, entering
houses, detaining and beating people.... A month ago, the border police soldiers set
a fire in one of the houses by throwing a stun grenade inside it.

Dozens of villagers have been of injured from shooting of rubber coated bullets,
tear gas and physical violence of soldiers.

For Wednesday the 27th of April, the people of Bil'in are inviting anyone who
believes in the values of justice, equality and solidarity, to join them and create
together a real alternative to the policy of annexation and dispossession of the
Israeli government.

Traveling arrangements should be coordinated with the communication women:

Haifa, Solel Bone, 08:00, yana 050-8575729

Tel Aviv, El-Al terminal ant the Arlozorov train station 09:00 Sheli 054-4547989

Jerusalem, Gan Hapaamon - 09:15, Eli, 054-5718758

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2. My first settler attack (Hanna-IWPS)

photographs can be found at the bottom of
http://community.webshots.com/album/311043526hlRLlA/1, and on the
following
page.

April 21, 2005

Last week, I witnessed my first settler attack. "It was nothing,"
my friend Arafat told me afterwards, and I know that he was speaking
in comparison to other attacks, when people have been injured and
even killed. Here, the Palestinian farmers were simply forced off
their land. Too simply. Too easily. But what can they do? They
don't have any weapons (unless you count their farming tools, as one
woman joked to me); only the Israeli settlers and soldiers have real
weapons.

We went to AsSawiya (not to be confused with AzZawiya) because the
farmers needed to plow their land that they haven't been able to
plow for four years, and they had permission from the army to go on
Sunday. The entire situation is absurd. The village has been here
for centuries, and in the past couple decades they've seen Israeli
settlers move onto their land, destroying or stealing it and
preventing farmers from continuing with their lives. In the past
three years they've seen this new outpost from the settlement of Eli
encroach even more upon their land, with the help of the Israeli
government who, even according to their own expansionist laws,
should stop new outposts from being built. When Palestinian farmers
try to go to their land that is anywhere near any settlements or
outposts, they are attacked, beaten, and forced off their land by
settlers. No settler from this area has been prosecuted, and the
police consistently refuse to accept statements and evidence, or to
follow up on cases.

Now the Israeli army has decided to "protect" the Palestinian
farmers. The way they do this is to give them permits to reach
their land for a few days a year (why do people need permits to go
to their own land, and what about the rest of the year?), and they
promise to protect the farmers while they are plowing (why don't
they remove the settlers from their illegal dwelling place instead
of trying to minimize the effects of the predictable settler
violence against Palestinians?). Even the army's protection is
questionable. What happened to us on Sunday is similar, apparently,
to what usually happens: settlers come and threaten or attack
Palestinians, and the army responds by telling the Palestinians that
they should leave their land in order to avoid being attacked.

But let me start at the beginning. We (four people from Rabbis for
Human Rights and I) arrived in AsSawiya and met my friend Arafat,
his mother, and a few other farmers. We walked up the mountain to
the land, with Arafat pointing out their new water pipes that carry
water to the village, and also pointing at the fresh water spring
that the settlers had contaminated a few years ago by bathing and
swimming in it. We reached the place where people wanted to work
and could see the outpost in the distance. The army was
nowhere to be seen (even though it was a designated army protection
day). The farmers spread out and plowed for about 20 minutes before
two armed settlers approached and began yelling at the families to
stop working, to go down, to leave their land. Most of the farmers,
knowing the danger, began to pack up right away. It wasn't quick
enough for the settlers, who kept yelling and running from family to
family. A couple minutes later two more settlers approached, and
more followed. These settlers were armed only with binoculars, not
rifles, but their behavior was more aggressive and violent than that
of the settlers with guns (who were apparently some sort of outpost
security force, though they had no uniforms and were clearly self-
appointed security guards). Some of the settlers began pushing the
farmers. I saw one of them kick a donkey pretty hard, but the
donkey seemed unperturbed. One man later showed me his ripped shirt
and told me a settler had hit him on the shoulder. There were no
witnesses, so the police would not take a report.

The farmers began walking down the hill, followed (chased) by the
settlers. Finally, an army jeep pulled up. Most of the settlers
temporarily left (although some came back later), and the
Palestinians were relieved. The armed settlers approached the
soldiers and began chatting. Their arms were on each other's
shoulders as one soldier asked where another settler was; clearly
they knew each other. Arafat tried to talk with the soldiers, to
say, "Where were you? This is our designated day to plow, and we
were on our land plowing. Can we go back now and continue work?"
The response was truly baffling: "You have to wait for the army to
get here." Weren't they the army? Apparently there were other
soldiers and commanders assigned to this task and they hadn't yet
arrived, so the Palestinians had to continue moving down off their
land, because God forbid these soldiers would actually ask the
settlers to walk up back towards their (illegal) homes.

When "the army" and police finally arrived, the settlers,
Palestinian farmers, and Israeli accompaniers began negotiating. I
sat with the women and talked, and time passed. We must have sat
there for an hour before the army finally announced (or rather,
asked Arafat to announce) that they would be allowed back to their
land to plow for what was left of the day. Two catches: 1) They
could not go to the land they wanted to plow, the land they had
begun working earlier. They had to stay in the lower area, even
further from the outpost. 2) All men (except children and old men)
had to have their IDs checked. One soldier stepped forward and said
he would check IDs, but the job was immediately taken over by a
settler. That's right, an armed Israeli settler from an illegal
outpost of an illegal settlement held a notepad in his hand and
proceeded to write down the ID numbers of every Palestinian man who
had come to plow that day. Other settlers began taking pictures of
the farmers. All of this was probably just a way to scare them, but
who knows what they could try to do if they wanted to hurt the
people – they have connections, and there are generally no
repercussions to their actions.

Finally the farmers were able to plow on some of their land. I
chatted for several hours with a couple Palestinian boys, one of
whom told me he spoke fluent Hebrew. Usually only the Palestinian
men who have worked in Israel speak Hebrew, so I asked him about
it. "My brother is married to a Jewish Israeli," he said, "and she
taught me."

One army jeep drove up to the outpost, and soldiers patrolled there
for the next several hours, making sure settlers did not come down
again. The farmers were relieved, and it was a minor victory, but I
was disgusted that the ability to hurriedly and frightfully plow
land, in a place that is not the place that most needs the work, is
a "victory" in the context of occupation.

Perhaps the most difficult part of the day for me, on a personal
level, was listening to attitudes of some of the Israeli
accompaniers and watching one of them interact with all the parties
there. Most people who come with Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR) are
fine, but not everyone has the same political analysis or
familiarity with the land and the people as Arik, the RHR director.
At one point, after the men had all packed up their equipment and
gone to where the army told them to go, a few women were still
trying to stay on their land and argue with settlers and soldiers.
One of the Israeli accompaniers (a man) said to me, "The women don't
understand the situation. The most important thing today is to plow
the land, not make a political statement. If they don't plow for
three years, an old Ottoman law says that the land is not theirs
anymore." "I think the women understand better that rules doesn't
get Palestinians anywhere. Just because they work their land does
not mean the settlers won't build another outpost and steal it." I
heard the man talking with someone on the phone later, probably a
man, and speaking in a
condescending and amused tone about the women.

In a far worse example, another Israeli accompanier was acting
exactly like the army – telling Palestinians not to go to the land
where they wanted to go because that would be "provoking" an attack;
stepping in the middle of an attack by facing Palestinians and
yelling at them to move down the hill, rather than asking the
settlers to move up; ordering farmers to go to certain places for
their "protection" – even pushing Arafat at one point in
the direction this man wanted him to go. I told him I thought he
was being completely inappropriate, that Arafat knew exactly what he
was doing and had far more experience with settler attacks than this
man did, etc. He did not change his behavior. He came to me later
and said, "I have seen too much death and tragedy in my own family,
so I'm here to stop violent confrontations no matter what it
takes." "That's fine," I said, "and a
completely appropriate attitude when you're in Israel. But when
you're here, your job is to follow the lead of the Palestinians and
do what they ask you to do, not push them around and tell them what
to do. If you don't want to listen to Palestinians, you should
continue your work at home, not here." I don't think he had any
idea that the farmers would perceive him as more of an oppressor
than an accompanier. And honestly, I don't think he really cared.
His work had nothing to do with Palestinians; it was for himself.
It's the same thing that happens in so many situations of
oppression, when a member of the oppressor group comes in and tries
to dictate to the oppressed how they should act, to tell them what's
best for them. People can't or won't step out of their own heads.
It reminds me of an e-mail I read last week that is more amusing
than offensive. Someone had sent a message to an activist Israeli
list serve entitled "Israeli presence needed in Yanoun on Sunday"
(Yanoun is a small village that has been consistently terrorized by
settlers from Itamar settlement). One Israeli responded to the
whole list saying, "That e-mail title was a bit ironic, and almost
funny. In fact, Israeli presence is absolutely what is NOT needed
in Yanoun on Sunday."

Where does all this leave us? More and more I've been hearing about
settler attacks recently – rounding up men and threatening to kill
them, poisoning land, unleashing wild boars in Palestinian gardens,
and more. "And they call us the terrorists," so many Palestinians
have said to me recently.

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3. Sick Palestinian detained for 9.5 hours and then arrested (Hannah and Anna-IWPS)

Date of incident: 21 April, 2005
Time: 12:30 – 10pm
Place: Huwara Checkpoint, Nablus
Witness/es: Detainee's brother, wife, 2 friends, and Anna (IWPS)
Contact details: IWPS withholds this information as a courtesy to
those involved – we will do our best to furnish you with all the
relevant information you might need to begin action.

Description of Incident

A resident of Qira was reportedly stopped at Huwara checkpoint
leaving Nablus, where he had spent 7 days in a hospital due to a
serious stomach infection. He was on his way home with his wife. The
detainee was held from 12:30-10pm while the army checked his ID. His
wife stayed with him, and his brother and a friend also came to wait
with them. The detainee appeared to be in a lot of pain, clutching
his stomach and coughing a lot. At 10pm the soldiers announced they
were taking him away, but would not give any information as to why,
where, or for how long he was being taken. He was driven away in a
jeep.

The DCO's Humanitarian Office reports that the sick man is being
held at Salem for being "a security threat." He was reportedly seen
by a doctor and is suffering from a stomach ulcer, for which he has
received medication. The DCL informed IWPS that the man would most
likely be interrogated and then released, but would not say for
sure. His family is not allowed to contact him, and they have not
been given any information about his condition, nor reason for his
detention.


We have more information about the man's name and his family's
contact details. – contact us if you need them.


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