Israeli settler shoots at Palestinians while IDF soldiers stand by
A new video released by B’Tselem on Sunday shows a settler allegedly firing live ammunition at Palestinians in Asira al-Qibliya, near Nablus, while soldiers stand idly by.
The incident took place on Saturday, around 4:30 P.M, when a group of settlers, apparently from the nearby settlement of Izhar, came to the Palestinian village.
In the video distributed by B’Tselem, a group that examines Israeli human rights violations in the West Bank, the settlers are seen throwing rocks at the village houses and residents.
A few minutes into the video, some Palestinian youths arrive at the scene and start throwing rocks back at the settlers. Shortly after, as gunfire is heard in the background, soldiers arrive and stand beside the settlers.
In the video, two of the settlers are armed; one with a pistol and one with an M-16 automatic rifle. They are seen aiming their weapons at the Palestinians and one seen firing at them, while soldiers do nothing to stop them.
As a result of the shooting, a 24-year-old Palestinian youth, Fathi Assayara, was wounded and taken to a Nablus hospital for treatment. B’Tselem says his condition is stable. Five more Palestinians were wounded by the rock throwing.
B’Tselem contacted the police and demanded that they bring the settlers up on assault charges. In addition, the organization contacted the IDF’s military police and demanded that an investigation be made into the conduct of the soldiers in the video.
“From the footage of the incident, it seems that the soldiers that were present didn’t take any measures to stop the settlers from throwing stones, lighting fires, and firing live rounds at the Palestinians. The soldiers didn’t try to get the settlers to leave and in fact stood by them while they threw stones and shot at the Palestinians,” B’Tselem said.
Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan receives a warm welcome from hundreds of supporters in his village of Arraba, in the West Bank, near Jenin on April 17, 2012. Adnan, who went on hunger strike for 66 days protesting Israel’s practice of administrative detention, was finally released after being detained in an Israeli jail without trial. The procedure allows a military court to order a detainee to be held for up to six months at a time without trial or even revealing the charges against them. (Getty Images)
European airlines cancel tickets of pro-Palestinian ‘flytilla’ activists
Ahead of Sunday’s planned ‘fly-in,’ Israel’s Interior Minister sends airlines list of names of blacklisted activists, threatens punitive steps if companies allow them to board Israel-bound flights.
Dozens of pro-Palestinian activists were prevented from boarding Israel-bound flights on Friday, due to the fact that their names appeared on a blacklist distributed by the Israeli government to a number of European airlines.
The activists were on their way to participate in a fly-in protest against Israeli construction in West Bank settlements, scheduled to take place on Sunday. Last July, a similar “fly-in” took place, with over 300 international activists arriving in Israel, and 120 detained.
In the letter, which was obtained by Haaretz, Amnon Shmueli of the Interior Ministry’s Population and Immigration Authority writes, “In light of statements by radical pro-Palestinian activists indicating that they intend to arrive on commercial flights from abroad, in order to disturb the peace and confront security forces at Ben Gurion International Airport and at other points of friction, it has been decided to forbid their entrance, in accordance with my authority according to the Law of Entry to Israel.”
Referring to a list of names of known pro-Palestinian activists whom Israel suspects will attempt to enter the country over the weekend, which was included in the letter, Shmueli writes, “In light of the above, you are requested not to board them onto Israel-bound flights.
The letter then goes on to threaten punitive steps if the airlines fail to comply with Israeli demands. “A failure to uphold this directive is liable to lead to leveling of sanctions against the airlines.”
“This is only a partial list, and additional lists will be sent subsequently. There is a high probability that the entry of additional activists will be prevented, whose names we cannot pass on ahead of time,” the letter continues.
After receiving the letter, a number of European airlines, including the German airline Lufthansa, contacted activists whose names appeared on the list and notified them that their tickets had been cancelled and would be refunded.
Police expect between 500 and 1,000 activists will attempt to enter Israel from European countries as part of the action, called “Welcome to Palestine.” Police are planning to intercept them at the airport and prevent their entry into the country. Hundreds of police officers are expected to be stationed at the airport ahead of their arrival, most of them unarmed and clothed in civilian dress.
Relatives of 17-year-old Palestinian Hisham Saad mourn during his funeral in the Gaza Strip, on April 4, 2012. According to Palestinian medical sources, Saad was killed by Israeli forces near the border between Israel and east of Gaza City, causing injuries to his face, neck and chest. (Reuters)
Israeli military shoots 14-year-old protester in face with rubber bullet
Today during the weekly Friday demonstrations in Nabi Saleh, family members of political prisoner Bassam Tamimi were wounded with rubber bullets by the Israeli military. 14-year-old Izz al-Abdul Hazfith Tamimi was shot in the face and Usama Bilal Tamimi was shot in the leg. Today’s protest against the wall was also in dedication to Bassam Tamimi, who was arrested one year ago, and hunger striker Hana Shalabi.
Palestinian women take part in a rally marking International Women’s Day and demanding the release of Hana Shalabi, a Palestinian prisoner who is now on the 22nd day of her hunger strike in an Israeli jail. (Getty Images / AP)
From 972mag:
Lawyers from the Palestinian prisoner rights group Addameer report that Shalabi’s physical condition is deteriorating. After more than three weeks of no food and very little water, Shalabi is beginning to experience pain in her chest and waist, suffers from nausea and dizziness, and is having a hard time talking without gasping for air.
Shalabi, who was released as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap, was re-arrested by the army on February 16, and has since been held in administrative detention with military authorities claiming she presents a threat to regional security. Much like Khader Adnan before her, Shalabi too has declared an open hunger strike until her release. Shalabi is also protesting having been strip-searched by a male soldier and abused by other soldiers after her arrest.
Israel shuts down two Palestinian TV stations in Ramallah
Israeli troops raided two private Palestinian television stations in the West Bank city of Ramallah yesterday, seizing transmitters and other equipment.
The military claimed one of the outlets, al-Watan TV, was a pirate station whose frequencies interfered with legal broadcasters and aircraft communications.
They confirmed that the second raid took place at Jerusalem Educational TV, owned by the Palestinian Al Quds University. The raids were authorised by Israel’s Communications Ministry.
Palestinian leaders denounced the raids as acts of aggression and a violation of media freedom.
The Palestinian Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, visited al-Watan after the raids and said the action undermined his government.
“This is a clear aggression against what remains of the Palestinian Authority,” he said, urging international mediators to persuade Israel not to carry out further raids.
Al-Watan’s director, Moammar Orabi, said about 30 troops raided its offices before dawn. The station often reports on Palestinian protests against Israeli policies in the West Bank. It is owned by three non-governmental groups, including the Palestinian Medical Relief Society.
(Photo: Reuters)
An Israeli soldier pushes away a Palestinian man from the village of Farata after masked Jewish settlers from the nearby illegal settlement of Havat Gilad threw stones at Palestinian villagers, east of the West Bank city of Qalqilya, on February 28, 2012. (Getty Images)
Khader Adnan’s two-month hunger strike has made him a hero among Palestinians outraged by Israel’s policy of arbitrary detention
It was only after talking with lucidity and animation for an hour about her husband’s 61-day hunger strike that Randa Jihad Adnan’s eyes, visible though the opening of her nekab, filled with tears. Until then, this articulate 31-year-old graduate in sharia law from Al Najar University in Nablus, the pregnant mother of two young daughters aged four and one and half, had described with almost disconcerting poise the two months following the arrest of her husband, Khader Adnan, on 17 December.
He was seized at 3.30am by some of the scores of Israeli military and security personnel who surrounded the family home in a West Bank village south of Jenin, and is now being held in the Israeli Rebecca Ziv hospital in Safed. On Wednesday she was allowed to visit him with the children and her father-in-law.
There they found him, weak and extremely thin, his beard unkempt and his fingernails long. He was shackled by two legs and one arm to his bed, and was connected to a heart monitor. Though mentally alert, he could speak only with difficulty. “I was shocked,” she said yesterday. “I couldn’t speak for about three minutes, and it was the same for my daughters.”
Mrs Adnan is convinced that the Israeli authorities only allowed the visit because they wanted the family to put pressure on her husband to end his hunger strike. He had started this on 18 December in protest at his arrest, his treatment and the subsequent detention order served on him.
“My father-in-law said to him: ‘We want you to stay alive. You cannot defeat this state on your own.’ He told him he wanted him to end the strike. I told him I wished he would drink a cup of milk. But he said: ‘I did not expect this from you. I know you are with me all the time. Please stop it.” Mrs Adnan said yesterday: “I know my husband. He will not change his mind. I expect him to die.”
The day before the visit, a Red Cross delegation had gone to her home to warn her that her husband’s heart could fail “at any minute”. They told her that he was suffering from muscular atrophy, which was affecting his heart and stomach, that his pulse was weak, and that his life was now in extreme danger.
Physicians for Human Rights issued a medical report this week supporting a petition to the Supreme Court for his release. In it the group said that even though Mr Adnan had agreed to be treated with an infusion of liquids and salts, augmented by glucose and vitamins, he had refused to end his hunger strike and was in “immediate danger of death”. The report added that a fast “in excess of 70 days does not permit survival”.
The Supreme Court petition, for which no date has been set for a hearing, is the last judicial chance to save his life as Mr Adnan has said he will not end his fast until he is released from his four months of administrative detention. A military appeals court ruled this week that he must remain in detention until May.
Mr Adnan, 33, a mathematics graduate who runs a bakery in nearby Qabatya, has long been politically active. He has been convicted for being a spokesman of Islamic Jihad, one of the most militant Palestinian factions. And he has been arrested numerous times by Israel, and at least once by the Palestinian Authority, since leading a student demonstration in 1999 at Bir Zeit University against the visiting French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.
But his family insists that he has never been involved in violence; nor has he been charged with it. Indeed, on this occasion, he has not been charged with any crime. His hunger strike has focused growing attention on the practice of administrative detention, in which Palestinians can be held without trial and on the basis of secret intelligence dossiers which are not shown to the defendant or his lawyers.
With international groups like Human Rights Watch demanding his release, and almost daily demonstrations in his support outside the Ofer military court near Ramallah, his case is fast taking on some of the political resonances of Bobby Sands, the most famous of the 10 IRA prisoners who died on hunger strike in prison in Northern Ireland in the early 1980s. Sands, an elected MP, died after 66 days without food.
Sitting with her older daughter, Maali, in front of a poster of her husband proclaiming “I reject administrative detention and I will continue the hunger strike until I am released”, Mrs Adnan said that he is determined to continue his fast. His resolve has been hardened, she said, not only by his summary arrest and its circumstances (he was seized while in the lavatory) but by his treatment during interrogation. She claimed her husband had been held for seven-hour periods – interspersed with one-hour breaks – on a short chair with his hands tied behind its back, causing him intense discomfort, and that parts of his beard had been torn out by interrogators.
She said he had also been subject to psychological pressure, which his lawyers told her he raised in one of his several military court appearances. “They told him bad words about me. They said ‘your wife is not pure’. They told him ‘now you have been arrested she is free to do anything.’” She says he told the military court that one interrogator later admitted to him: “We know you love your wife and that she loves you. That’s why we said things against her.”
Mrs Adnan, who said that her husband had repeatedly declared that “my honour is more precious than food”, added that her only hope now is that Israel will decide “to whiten its face in the world by releasing him”. She said that it is for him to take the final decision, and that when she urged him to drink milk she was mainly carrying “a message from his mother.”
Mr Adnan’s sister – also called Maali – tentatively acknowledged the possibility that her brother might yet be persuaded that he had done enough to transmit his message to the world protesting about the use of administrative detention without trial or charge. But, saying that Mr Adnan was a model father who “loves life”, she added: “I am not sure that he wants just to deliver a message. He also wants to end the administrative detention. We have so much faith in Allah to get him out of this situation. We believe that God will not let him down.”
Randa Adnan recalled that her husband told one of his lawyers: “I do not want to go to oblivion or death. But I am a man who defends his freedom. If I die it will be my fate.”
Photos: Randa Adnan with a poster of her husband Khader Adnan (Quique Kierszenbaum) / Maali Adnan, 4, holds a picture of her father during a solidarity protest in the West Bank village of Arrabeh on February 17, 2012 (AP)
Palestinians mourn death of ten bus crash children
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has declared three days of mourning for the ten Palestinian children killed when a school bus collided with a truck treacherous mountain road near Ramallah in the West Bank on Thursday.
The bus was carrying children and their teachers from a kindergarten in Shuafat refugee camp on an expedition to a park near Ramallah when it was struck head on by a truck travelling in the opposite direction and forced off the road.
In a statement published by official Palestinian agency Wafa, Mr Abbas requested that Palestinian flags at home and abroad be lowered to half-mast.
“This is a national catastrophe, a tragic accident and painful for our people and the families of these martyrs,” he said.
Both Palestinian and Israeli emergency teams arrived at the scene close to Hizme checkpoint separating Jerusalem from the West Bank and pronounced three children dead on site. At least 30 more were injured in the disaster.
“This is a very serious accident. The place looks like a battle field,” one doctor told Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper.
Palestinian and Israeli emergency services have launched a joint investigation into the tragedy.
“The driver of the truck appears to have lost control and hit the front of the school bus,” said Israeli police spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld several hours after the crash.
“Unfortunately the bus then exploded in flames which is why everyone on board has suffered serious to moderate injuries. So far eight children have been confirmed dead and 30 taken to hospitals in Ramallah and Jerusalem.”
Three five-year-old children are being treated at the Hadassah University Hospital in Ein Kerem with burns to 75 per cent of their bodies.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, broke from an official visit to Cyprus to express his sorrow at the loss of life and offer the Palestinian Authority any assistance it might need to respond to the tragedy. But the gleeful reaction of several Israelis on Twitter has provoked disgust and outrage on social media sites.
One tweet posted by Ajali Cali read, “Great, less terrorists” while another tweeter named Itai Viltzig said: “Thank God [these are] Palestinians. I hope every day there is a bus like this [that crashes].”
Roads open to Palestinian drivers in the occupied West Bank are notoriously dangerous. In 2007 there were 3776 reported crashes on Palestinian roads, 4 per cent of which resulted in fatalities. In May last year, a collision between a private Palestinian vehicle and a tourist bus left four dead and several injured.
(Photos: Getty Images / AP)
