The Naksa - 38 Years Later

1. Naksa Day Demonstration in Bil’in

By Rann, Friday June 2nd 2005

For pictures:
https://israel.indymedia.org/newswire/display/3216/index.php

The village of Bil’in had been preparing for this demonstration for many days. They
had made 1,500 Palestinians flags, so that everyone in the demonstration could have
one. The sea of flags was a wonderful sight to behold, as Palestinians, Israelis
and internationals demonstrated together once again against the Annexation Wall.
The demonstration started with an exhibit of the methods of street theatre and
direct action used by the villagers in the last few months, as well as the
bewildering array of ‘crowd-dispersal’ weapons used by the Israeli army – tear gas
canisters; remnants of sound bombs; rubber
bullets and their casings; and live ammunition.

We marched down to the land, shouting slogans in Arabic, English and Hebrew. We
were met by a line of soldiers, who prevented us from continuing. A number of
demonstrators attempted to bypass the soldiers, only to be met with tear gas. After
some further confrontation, the villagers decided to pray on their land. Just
before the prayers started, a number of soldiers pushed a few demonstrators back,
prompting some shouting from demonstrators. The Druze army commander taunted the
demonstrators, telling them that
they have no respect for their hosts. However, the demonstrators had already
quieted down, so all disrespect was coming from the soldiers. The demonstrators
maintained a dignified silence and the prayer proceeded.

After the prayer, many Palestinian demonstrators decided to return towards the
village, while some Israeli activists both covered their retreat and attempted to
proceed forward towards the bulldozers
constructing the wall. The army promptly responded with heavy tear gassing and used
sound bombs. As people made their way back to the village, local youth responded to
the army’s provocations by throwing
stones. At least ten demonstrators were injured by rubber bullets and from tear gas
inhalation. Israeli media later reported that one soldier lost his eyesight in his
left eye after being hit by a stone.

The soldiers fortified themselves in a partially-built house at the edge of the
village and continued to use tear gas, sound bombs and rubber bullets. Ahmed Tibi,
an Israeli member of Knesset who was present at the demonstration, said that he was
punched in the stomach
by a soldier, who then grinned and walked off. Former Palestinian presidential
candidate Mustafa Barghouthi and one other Israeli MK were very lightly injured.
West Bank Hamas leader Hassan Yousef, who had come tothe demonstration at the
request of villagers, was not
hurt.

Two Israeli activists were arrested, including the refusenik Haggai Matar, who has
served a two-year jail term for his decision to conscientiously object to the
occupation. The arrests were illegal, as the arresting officers refused to identify
themselves or to tell the arrestees what they had been arrested for. Both were taken
to Giv’at Ze’ev police station, charged and released on bail, with conditions not to
return to the route of the wall in the Bil’in area for fifteen days.

Later on in the demonstration, the army used a new weapon – a vehicle that emitted
sound at high frequencies, causing dizziness and pain. Villagers quickly
distributed an effective defence: cotton earplugs. Another useless bit of offensive
technology...one wonders what’s coming next.

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2. Israeli solders and the culture of revenge

Palestinian man held and beaten after Friday’s protest in Bil'in

A day after an Israeli solider lost the sight in his left eye due to being hit by a
stone at a demonstration in the village of Bil’in, someone in the army decided to
take revenge. Five Israeli border
police grabbed a member of the Bil’in regional committee against the wall from a
public taxi, beat him, and delivered a threat to the people in Bil'in.

Samir Suliman Yasin Baranat, 28, is the director of a sports club in Bil'in. At
about 5 p.m., while on his way to the village of Nahalin, located near the illegal
Israeli settlement of Nili, the taxi Samir
was riding in was stopped by Israeli Border Police.

"They asked if I was from Bil'in. When I said I was, they told me to get out, took
my ID and told me to stand next to a ditch where a bulldozer was digging nearby,"
Samir said. "I stood there for an hour and was getting tired and wanted to sit. I
tried to sit down on a rock and one of soldiers hit me in the back with a club and
told me to stand up."

Samir was nervous as the military's use of collective punishment and revenge tactics
are well known among Palestinians. Such acts have been more widely reported in
recent weeks. BBC News reported June 3
that Israeli soldiers have admitted that they were ordered to carry out revenge
attacks three years ago against Palestinian people in response to an attack by
militants that resulted in the deaths of six Israeli soldiers. The report said that
solders admitted they were part of a mission that killed at least 15 Palestinians in
an act of revenge, and made no attempt to determine if their victims were
civilians or combatants.

"I know you from demonstrations in Bil'in, And you'll see what were gonna do with
you. Are you afraid?" Samir said a soldier told told him. "I said back to him, 'You
can kill me. I' m not afraid' The soldier said, 'We're not gonna kill you, but we're
gonna do something else with you.' ""

The border police took Samir into the Nili settlement where, for about two hours he
was repeatedly beaten and questioned.

"'Who are your friends?' 'Who throws stones?' 'What is your job in the Palestinian
Authority?' I said, 'you know what my job is.' 'Yes, I know' he answered, 'but I
want to hear you say it.'

“Samir said. "He slapped me on the face and mouth and started punching me and
clubbed me in the stomach. Then all five of them joined in, kicking me with their
steel toed boots, especially in the legs."

Eventually, a woman's voice came over the speaker of one of the border policemen's
walky-talky ordering them to let Samir go. "The soldier said to me, 'If we see you
at a demonstration in Bil’in, we are going to kill you,' "Samir said.”When is the
next demonstration? We are
planning something special. A soldier lost his eye in Bil'in, so you better be very
very careful".

Samir was left outside the settlement at about 8 p.m.

International law prohibits an occupying power from imposing collective punishment
on an occupied population. Samir was held, interrogated and beaten for actions that,
even the Israeli border police knew at the time that he did not commit.

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3. Palestinian Flags on a Settler Road!

By Allison and Rann
June 4 2005

The village of Marda in the central West Bank district of Salfit lies at the bottom
of a hill that is topped by the massive settlement of Ariel. Two days ago, 500 of
the village’s trees were cut as a prelude to the building of the Annexation Wall on
village land.

As a non-violent means of protesting the construction of the Annexation Barrier in
the Sa`lfit region, a march was held this morning. The march began in Marda and
ended in the nearby village of Kifl Hares. The two villagers are separated by a
settler road which
Palestinians require special permits to use. The march included Palestinians and
Israeli and international activists in solidarity with their struggle. There were
about 350 demonstrators in all.

We knew there would be trouble before the march began because soldiers had set up
check points at both entrances to Marda and had declared these entrances closed
military zones. Some demonstrators were forced
to park their cars on the nearby road and walk to join the march. Unlike many
previous occasions in which activists were prevented from reaching demonstrations,
this time in an unusual move, the soldiers stopped people asked them if they were
there for the demonstration, and if they said yes, they then allowed them to enter
Marda.

At about 11:30AM we began marching down the road away from Marda but were soon
stopped by the soldiers. I and many others attempted to push through the line of
soldiers, but they used physical force to prevent us from proceeding as planned. At
some points there was
quite a bit of physical force being used by the soldiers and I was afraid they would
start firing tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the demonstration as is the
normal occurrence in demonstrations in the
West Bank. One Israeli activist, Leiser, was beaten by Israeli soldiers as he was
arrested and was hospitalized with a concussion.

After some negotiating we decided to alter our path a bit, traveling across the
fields and across the settler road to dirt road that led to Kifl Hares. As we were
crossing the settler road, around seventeen
(!) army jeeps and hummers blocked the road, holding up settler traffic. The army
pushed quite a few people around, including one elderly Israeli man who was pushed
off the road and fell hard on his back. Soldiers seemed rather angry that we were
waving Palestinian flags in the middle of ‘their’ road. One Palestinian man was
violently ‘arrested’ only to be released a few minutes later. Eventually the march
was allowed to proceed.

At one point the dirt road ran along the main road so that the march was visible to
drivers passing by. We were greeted with taunts of ‘you should be ashamed’ from at
least one settler and with victory signs from Palestinians. Not long afterward we
successfully arrived in Kifl Hares, and there were several speeches made as well as
singing and dancing. It was heartening to see such a successful march conclude with
relatively little violence by the soldiers and also to see the raised spirits of all
those who marched.

A few thoughts on the demonstration:
- Negotiating with the army very rarely produces any results. If this has been a
Palestinian-only demonstration, or if only young Israelis and internationals had
supported the Palestinian demonstrators, there would have probably been a lot more
violence. The presence of older Israelis thus probably made a huge difference.

- This was a huge victory for Palestinian villagers. Marching across a settler road
is an enormously powerful symbol of liberation and one that I hope to see repeated
over and over again.

- The huge number of relatively calm forces used by the army (well over 100
soldiers) was interesting. The army could have used a much smaller number of
soldiers and a lot more violence. They chose not to, and the demonstration felt
more like a European or American one. While those types of marches are rather dull
in Europe or the US, the novelty of such a demonstration here was rather uplifting.

Link to photos of road signs altered hours before the demonstration:
https://israel.indymedia.org/media/index.php

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4. Israeli signs get activist makeover
By Laila El-Haddad in Gaza

For the full story-
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/2A05C458-9839-471D-9224-330398169C00.htm


Sunday 05 June 2005, 0:03 Makka Time, 21:03 GMT

Israelis driving along Highway 505 in the West Bank have been greeted with an
unexpected sight. Signs that usually guide them to settlements instead on Saturday
reminded them of the illegality of the
construction on confiscated West Bank land.

A sign pointing to Ariel, the largest settlement in the northern West Bank, built on
land belonging to the Palestinian villagers of Salfit, now marks the way in Hebrew,
Arabic and English to "stolen land".

Another sign that indicates the distance to Ariel from an Israeli checkpoint 12km
away reminds drivers of the ongoing occupation and of the separation wall being
built around Palestinian towns.

"1967: Occupation; 2005: Apartheid Wall in Salfit" read the signs.

Signs of Truth, a group of Israeli and international activists acting in solidarity
with local Palestinians, altered the signs on Saturday to coincide with the 38th
anniversary of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967.

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5. Silwan ICAHD (Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions) report and call for
action

For the Full report Written By Jeff Halper see:
http://www.icahd.org/eng/news.asp?menu=5&submenu=1&item=235

The politics of Silwan go far beyond demographic considerations, however, or even
concerns over parks. Silwan – or “The City of David” as it has rechristened by the
Israeli authorities who opened a visitors’ center on the site -- is considered the
site where the city of Jerusalem began, and thus it is coveted by Israeli settlers
who have conducted an aggressive campaign to remove Palestinians from the place. In
fact, a settler organization called El Ad focuses exclusively on the Silwan area,
and does so with discreet help from the Israeli government. In 1992 Haim Klugman,
then-Director General of the Ministry of Justice, issued what became known as the
Klugman Report. It reported that tens of millions of dollars had been given to the
settler groups, including El Ad, by government ministries; that false documents
supplied by Arab collaborators had been used to
classify Palestinian houses as "absentee property;” that the Israel Lands Authority
and the Jewish National Fund had allotted much of Silwan to the settlers without
offering it up for tender; and that
public funds had been used to finance the settlers' legal expenses.

"We break up Arab continuity and their claim to East Jerusalem by putting in
isolated islands of Jewish presence in areas of Arab population," say Uri Bank, a
leader of the pro-settlement Moledet party. "Then we definitely try to put these
together to form our own
continuity. It's just like Legos - you put the pieces out there and connect the
dots. That is Zionism. That is the way the state of Israel was built. Our eventual
goal is Jewish continuity in all of Jerusalem."

Silwan Action Alert From ICAD (The Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions)

BACKGROUND
The municipality of Jerusalem intends to demolish an entire east Jerusalem
neighbourhood in the el-Bustan area of Silwan village, close to the walls of the Old
City. Jerusalem’s municipal architect, Uri Shetrit, argued that the demolitions are
to make way for an archaeological park documenting the city's ancient Jewish
origins.
Several Palestinian residents have received demolition notices, but the plan still
faces court challenges. If approved, it would be one of the largest demolitions
since east Jerusalem was occupied by Israel in 1967. 88 homes and 1000 residents
are affected by this threat. Destroying Palestinians houses has become an Israeli
obessession, proceeding without pause despite initiatives to renew a diplomatic
process.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Contact your government representatives. Many of them do not seem to be overly
concerned about, or perhaps they're just ignorant of, Israeli crimes in the Occupied
Territories. It's possible though, that
enough pressure can be applied from below to make them feel less elect-able if they
don't modify their positions. The draft letter offered below is simply a template
to be used or modified as you see fit.

--Phone, fax, or email your representatives directly.
If you are a U.S. Resident or citizen, find your representative’s contact
information at http://www.senate.gov and http://www.house.gov. If you have the ability, one fax is
generally worth about ten emails.

please send a cc of your messages to lucia [at] icahd.org.


Prime Minister Ariel Sharon,
Office of the Prime Minister
3 Kaplan Street, P O Box 187
Jerusalem 91919, Israel
Phone: +972-2-6753333
Fax: +972 2 6521599
E-mail: pm_eng [at] pmo.gov.il
PM_ENG1 [at] it.pmo.gov.il

Minister of Justice Tzippi Livni
Ministry of Justice
29 Salah al-Din Street
Jerusalem 91010, Israel
Phone: +972-2-6708511
Fax: +972 2 6285438/6288618
E-mail: sar [at] justice.gov.il (may bounce),
mancal [at] justice.gov.il, pniot [at] justice.gov.il

SAMPLE LETTER

Dear…

I am shocked to hear that the Israeli government plans to demolish 88 houses in East
Jerusalem. This action is a grave damage to peace efforts and contravenes the Road
Map, which specifies that "the government of Israel ends actions, undermining trust,
including attacks in civilian areas and confiscation/demolition of Palestinians
homes/property." I ask you to do all in your power to scrap the plan to raze the
houses in the Silwan neighbourhood.

Yours….

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6. Demonstration in Beit Surik - June 5, 2005

Today at 8:30 AM, the villagers of Beit Surik will once again stand with Israeli and
international peace activists to protect their land from destruction and theft.
Israel is continuing to erect the Annexation barrier on Beit Surik in defiance of
the International
Court of Justice.

Last week, the villagers repeatedly demonstrated against this barrier that is
depriving them of their land and livelihoods. Mounted police charged the crowd and
whipped them with plastic sticks, while border
police threw tear gas. Seven villagers were hospitalized, including 55-year-old,
Tyseer Ahmad Shkir, whose legs were broken by border police.

Beit Surik has always had good relations with the neighboring Israeli towns,
especially the town of Mevasseret Tzion, some of whose residents joined their appeal
to the Israeli Supreme court against the
original route of the barrier. However, the revised route will still steal seven
hundred dunam (175 acres) of Beit Surik lands.

Village residents have again appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court. While case is
still pending, the court has not stopped the construction.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Abu Rami (Hebrew, Arabic) - 0546-995-485
Abu Jabar 054-4786914
Khulud 054-7469738