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February 1st, 2007
07:22 pm - Amy's blog
Please visit http://travelingamy.blogspot.com/ for photos and articles!
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December 16th, 2005
10:13 am - Marisol's Blog
A few days ago, I was reminded why I chose to become a part of the IWPS team.
A woman from the village where we live told me over tea that she and many other women here have the idea to develop a place in the village with sewing machines for women to use. So I told her that we know some women who run many similar women’s projects in Tulkarem, and I invited her to come with me to visit them.
It was great to be in the room with them, they had many words of encouragement for her, and some new ideas for income generation as well. In the process we met another woman who works throughout a large area of the west Bank for her work with women, so we tell her she is invited to see us anytime she is in our area, and that she is welcome any time to stop by and pay us a visit. She runs and supports various womens projects.
I am reminded that more important than what we can do to support women here is the issue of how they can support each other. It is sometimes difficult to think of how we can do that, as visitors here, but today was a living example and it was great to be a part of it.
A few days from now, a few of us will go to a meeting in Ramallah of all of the women who have been elected to village councils. We are so excited to meet them, and honored that our proposal to come and meet them was given approval. We will introduce IWPS and let them know what we do and mention some possibilities for working with them, generate a few ideas from them on the same subject, and hopefully walk away with a way to get in touch with all of them in the future.
Wish us luck for being able to work together with a sense of hope and co-operation.
Marisol
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December 12th, 2005
09:46 am - Young Boy Detained, Blindfolded by Israeli Army
Human Rights Report No. 231
Date of incident: November 12th, 2005
Place: Deir Istiya, Salfit District
Witness/es: Deir Istiya residents and IWPS volunteers
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 Incidents
On November 13th, 2005 at approximately 7:00 p.m. two jeeps of the Israeli army entered the village of Deir Istiya. According to eyewitnesses they stopped in front of a local pharmacy and proceeded to detain a 14 year old they suspected of having thrown stones. They put him into a Jeep and brought him to an unknown location outside of the village.
After around one hour the father of the boy was contacted by the commander in charge and told to come to the entrance of the village to pick up his son in return for a payment of NIS 500.
When the IWPS volunteers approached the scene the commander told the boy’s father that he would not insist on the payment. One soldier then proceeded to release the boy from the blindfold and the handcuffs.
Report by: Clara and Miriam
Date report written on: November 13th, 2005
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July 22nd, 2004
11:09 pm - RE:Elderly woman shot and critically wounded by army in Hares
Human Rights Report No. 135
Human Rights Summary:
Elderly woman shot and critically wounded by army in Hares
Date of incident: July 21, 2004
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Place: On the street near the school in Hares
Witness/es: Rastil K., Iman K., Sadik S.
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
Witnesses reported that an army jeep entered the village from the east and remained in the village for an hour. Children threw stones, and the soldiers threw sound bombs and three canisters of gas. After the crowd had been dispersed by the gas, the soldiers, standing in the street, fired into the house of Lamiya Qasem Kleeb, who was seated in her stairwell. Kleeb is 60 years old.
Kleeb's nephew took her by car to Huwara checkpoint, where she was transferred to an ambulance which took her to Rafidiya Hospital in Nablus. Kleeb’s husband, Iman Suleiman Ahmed Kleeb, was forbidden by the soldiers to accompany his wife to the hospital. According to witnesses, the soldiers threatened to shoot anyone who tried to follow the car which drove Kleeb out of the village. Her nephew reported that the car was delayed at Zatara checkpoint and the ambulance was also delayed at Huwara, and that it took her one and a half hours to reach the hospital. If you do not have to wait, it takes about 30 minutes to reach Nablus from Hares.
Doctor Samir, an emergency room physician at Rafidiya, said that Kleeb was shot twice in the back and once in the abdomen. She sustained 70% damage to her kidneys, and has lost at least seven liters of blood. “Her intestines are outside of her body,” reported Dr. Samir.
Family members showed IWPS seven separate bullet impact points in the stairwell where she was shot. Numerous shell casings were recovered from the scene. Three families, comprising 20 people including 10 children live in the house where Kleeb was shot. The soldiers also shot and damaged water tanks on two houses neighboring Kleeb’s.
According to Dr. Samir, the prognosis for her survival is not good.
Report written by: Kate and Carolyn
Date report written on: July 22, 2004
Follow up required:. Stay in touch with hospital and the family. Try to interest media in the story.
The International Women's Peace Service, Haris, Salfit, Palestine.
Tel:- (09)-2516-644. Mob:- : 067-870-198
Email:- iwps@palnet.com Website:- www.womenspeacepalestine.org
Operating out of Haris, near Salfit, the International Women's Peace Service monitors and responds to Human Rights Abuses in the area. Part of our mission is to contact the relevant authorities in the case of any arrests that take place in the Haris area.
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July 20th, 2004
10:03 am - Children, Artists Paint Apartheid Wall at Mas'ha
Children, Artists Paint Mural on Apartheid Wall at Mas'ha
Sunday, July 18, 2004
For almost nine months, Maisa, Assia, Ishak, Nidal, and Shaad have looked out their front door to see an 8-meter grey wall where their village used to be. On Sunday, the children worked with muralists from San Francisco's Break the Silence Mural Project to transform their view into one of hope and freedom. Where dark concrete loomed, a yellow bird now soars from a lush green valley dotted with red flowers.
The family of Hani Aamer lives surrounded by the Segregation Wall in Mas'ha, Salfit District, West Bank, Palestine. Their house sits between the two main gates into the village, and they let themselves and others in and out through a gate which sends an alarm to the Israeli army every time it is opened. Although the Wall in Mas'ha is a fence, last November, the army erected a concrete wall, 24 feet high and 40 meters long, directly in front of the house. For months, the family was allowed no visitors at all, but recently, after their situation was publicized on Israeli television, the army commander said that they could have periodic visits from family members. However, all the family's visitors must be approved by the army.
On Sunday, July 18, 2004, the two visiting muralists came to Mas'ha with members of the International Women's Peace Service (IWPS) and friends from the neighboring village of Biddia bringing paints and designs to create a mural on the Wall. Soldiers at the gate stopped the activists and took their passports, saying they had to obtain permission for the visit. After about 20 minutes, the family was allowed to open the gate for their visitors and the art party began. Over 20 children and five adults helped to design and paint the mural, which took six hours to complete.
The Aamer house was the site of the last Mas'ha Peace Camp in August 2003. At that time, forty-five Israeli, international and Palestinian activists were arrested trying to block demolition of the Aamer's animal shed for the sake of the Wall.
Today's direct action went peacefully, however, as the army watched but decided not to interfere with the painting.
Susan, one of the visiting muralists, said she and IWPS organized the art party because "The Aamer children have been so traumatized by their imprisonment and the constant military presence in their home. I wanted to help them reclaim and transform their space."
"When you come here to paint with the children like this, you make them feel that they can live," Hani Aamer told her.
Pictures of the mural and its creation can be found on the IWPS website, www.womenspeacepalestine.org/masha_mural.htm. Video of the action is also available from IWPS.
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June 14th, 2004
03:11 pm - Urgent Action - Iskaka - Wednesday, June 16
URGENT CALL FOR ACTION IN ISKAKA
WHEN – 9 AM Wednesday 16TH June
Bulldozers will begin to work on the wall in Iskaka on Wednesday! The village has asked for internationals and Israeli’s to come to Iskaka on Wednesday at 9am.
Demonstrations in Az Zawiya are also continuing so please try and send people to both villages.
Contact number is 050 441991 or Jawal 059 671977
Call IWPS 09 2516644 or Carolyn 0546 236154
*Please call to confirm if you plan on coming.
Directions to Iskaka – from Jerusalem
Get a Taneeb bus or serveece to Zatara. When you get out of the bus at Zatara take the left fork of the road - direction Ariel. Take the first left off this road. It is the road to the settlement of Tapuach, the village of Yusuf and then Iskaka. This road also eventually reaches Salfeet. You can get a Palestinian serveece from the turnoff to Yusuf. There is a roadblock at Yusuf so you will need to get out and get another taxi from the other side of the roadblock.
From Tel-Aviv
Get a settler bus to Ariel. Get out first stop in Ariel. Walk to the road and get Palestinian transport to Yusuf.
By car from Jerusalem or Tel Aviv
If you want to bring your car you will need to park it at the garage just outside Hares (ring IWPS for directions) and then catch Palestinian transport back to Yusuf and follow the direction from there.
Driving directions to Az Zawiya:
From Jerusalem:
Take Hwy 60 to Tapuach Junction (Zatara)
Turn left onto 505W
Past Ariel, merge onto Hwy 5
Take 5 to Kesem Interchange
Go around circle, follow signs to Ariel
Take turnoff to Beit Arye
End of road that goes to Beit Arye is Deir Ballut checkpoint
After checkpoint, go right, Az Zawiya is the second village you come to (turn left into the village)
From Israel:
There is a road from Israel towards Ari’el, Pdu’el and Alei Zahav that goes right by the Deir Ballut checkpoint.
If you get stopped at Deir Ballut, please try an alternate route.
Alternate route from Tel Aviv taking Palestinian roads from Haris junction:
On Hwy. 5 towards Ari’el, turn left where the road narrows (couple of kilometers before Ari’el). There is a sign for Kedumim. Half way up this hill, there are two small stores and a garage on your left. Behind the stores is a large frame structure with a blue canopy. It’s ok to park by the garage.
Then walk up the hill till you come to the junction—straight ahead is Barqan, to the right is the road to Kedumim. Go straight ahead direction Barqan and cross the road to the Palestinian bus stop where you can pick up a service to the roadblock at Qarawat Bani Hassan. (2 shekels per person in a service, 10 shekels for a car). Go through the roadblock and take a service to Az Zawiya (20 shekels for a car/service).
Ahmad is a taxi driver fromn Az Zawiya. Call him at 052 267 545 ahead of time and he’ll come to the roadblock to meet you. Otherwise, just take any available driver. Ask for the one whose turn it is. They have a kind of system where the drivers from Az Zawiya who have been waiting longest take the next customers.
There are sometimes flying checkpoints but ordinarily they let Israeli cars through for the settlers. Tell them you’re going to Kedumim.
You could also take a bus to Barqan and then walk out – never tried this but theoretically you should be able to do it.
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June 11th, 2004
01:32 am - Salfit and settlements
The Truth Will Prevail
This booklet was written in May 2004 to show the living Palestinian people and communities of Salfit. Written in response to a promotional leaflet that was produced for Ariel, which totally ignores the Palestinian presence and presents Ariel as being in the centre of Israel, it uses the pictures and wording from the Ariel brochure and contrasts these with the missing pictures. Angie of the International Womens Peace Service-Palestine (IWPS) wrote it and took the pictures at the request of Nawaf Souf, the Salfit District Co-ordination Officer.
IWPS thanks the very many people who live in the towns and villages of Salfit for the information and time they provided to enable its publication. This booklet is dedicated to them all in their struggle for their land. It is especially dedicated to Issa Souf, a peace-loving man of Haris who was shot and paralysed by a soldier of the Israeli Defence Forces in 2001 while trying to bring his children to safety during an army invasion and who works with all who work for peace and justice. He helped a great deal in the production of this booklet.
The booklet can be seen on the IWPS website along with many other reports about life in Salfit. You can find the website at www.iwps.info. A copy of the original brochure is also on the website. If you look at it you can see that it was produced to promote the settlement of Ariel and you will see no mention of Palestine, no pictures of the life of the Palestinians. IWPS here presents another view, one almost covered over by the colonial expansion of settlements. Here are pictures of a land and a people who refuse to be erased, who have endured an occupation for almost 40 years and who are still living and honouring their traditions and ancient history. Here is the true face of the land of Salfit.
Present day Salfit
The Salfit Governorate is situated in the North West of the West Bank to the south and west of Nablus and to the North of Ramallah. The green line lies to the west of Salfit. There are roughly 64,251 Palestinian people in the 23 Palestinian towns and villages of Salfit. In order of size they are Salfit city (12,000), Biddya (8,000), Kafra ad Dik (4,946), Az Zawiya (4,877), Deir Istiya (3,700), Qarawat Bani Hasan (3,568), Deir Ballut (3,538), Bruqin (3,510), Kifl Haris (3,107), Haris (2,943), Sarta (2,508), Marda (2,125), Rafat (1,936), Mas’ha (1,903), Yasuf (1,692), Farkha (1,472), Iskaka (1,055), Qira (994), Khirbet Qeis (243), Wadi Qana (69), Izbat Abu Adam (46), Khirbet Susa (13), Dar Abu Basal (6).
The villages and towns of Salfit each have a village council and Mayor and many have a Municipality building (often built with foreign aid).
Salfit, itself is a town of around 12,000 inhabitants and is the regional capital of the Governorate of Salfit. Salfit contains local branches of the Palestinian Government Offices of :- Agriculture, Chamber of Commerce, Culture, Education, Health, Interior, Islamic Affairs, Labour, Local Government, National Establishment Office, Security, Social Affairs, Youth and Sport, but there are few resources for community work.
The Israelis, on the other hand, have constructed 21 illegal settlements on confiscated Palestinian land in the Salfit Govenorate since their Military Occupation in 1967. These settlements contain over 55,000 colonists,
around 28,000 of whom now live in Ariel settlement that stretches for over 12 km on top of some of Salfit’s most beautiful hilltops. The settlers continue to expropriate more Palestinian land and there are plans for even more land to be stolen through the building of the Wall. Once the Wall is completed there will be three open air prisons or cantons – the Haris-Jama’in area, the Salfit area and the Deir Ballut area.
Ariel, itself, is presented as the Capital of Samaria, in the heart of Israel, 40 km east of Tel Aviv, 40 km west of the River Jordan and 65 km from Jerusalem. Described as an urban settlelment occupying 12 km from west to east and as a dynamic young city, the brochure shows an aerial view of the city and some close-ups of the housing and centre.
In Ariel the brochure informs us there are 3,000 families, 13,000 inhabitants. The Israeli Ministry of Housing and Building has made a plan for a population of 100,000. The population of the city is varied with young couples and middle-aged families, born in Israel and from different ethnic groups. 85% are non-religious and 15% religious.
New immigrants continue to settle in Ariel with hundreds of families coming from Russia, South America and North America.
They are given subsidised housing, transport and educational benefits to entice them to settle in the West Bank. Encouraged to think of themselves as being in an Israeli town, few of them even know the names of the villages upon whose land they are living or that the indigenous people call the area Salfit not Samaria. Some villages are not even allowed to have a village signpost. Haris for instance has had it’s village signpost removed numerous times.
Whereas Ariel attracts new immigrants with its comfortable housing at cheap prices and new housing units are being built every year, the reality is very different in the Palestinian villages. The building in the Palestinian villages and towns is controlled by the Israeli authorities in various ways – mainly by unfair and discriminatory denial of building permits but also by the use of armed force to demolish houses. At least 12 houses and 5 public buildings have been demolished in the Salfit Governorate since September 2002. The total estimated cost of damages is around US45 million.
Security is non-existent for Palestinians. Every home has had a close family member either in prison and often tortured, or injured or killed. Salfit is the Governorate that has experienced much less direct Israeli violence than other Governorates and yet even here there have been 30 people killed, 209 seriously injured and 143 prisoners in the last 3 years.
Rafat is a typical little Salfit village with a history going back thousands of years. It has an ancient mosque of over 800 years and many old houses in the centre. Firmly rooted in its fertile soil there are olives, wheat and barley grown. Rafat is renowned for its meat and cheese from the many goats and sheep that graze on the pasture. However, the illegal Israeli settlements can be seen dominating the hills around, Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks prevent free movement, and armed settlers and soldiers invade the village from time to time.
The building of the ‘Separation Fence’ (as the Israelis call it) or the ‘Expropriation Wall’ (as the Palestinians call it) will mean the loss of access to over 50% of their best and most fertile land. The village will be in a little enclave along with Deir Ballut, Az Zawwiya and Mas’ha. – an open-air prison which the Israelis will be able to control completely. The pressure that this little village already feels from the oppressive military occupation of their land will increase another tortuous notch.
Transport in Salfit
Until the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, the main access road to Salfit from the northern villages was the road that forks off the road that has now become the main entrance into the illegal settlement of Ari’el. This route to Salfit has been completely blocked. Therefore traffic to Salfit from villages like Kifl Haris have to go east, and then along a dirt track to the south of Tapuah Settlement that then leads back west through the villages of Yasouf and Iskaka. Although this route has also been blocked by rubble and concrete since the outbreak of the intifada, Palestinians go round the blockage on foot and collect transport on the other side. However, this road is long and unsatisfactory as the main traffic artery between Salfit and villages to the north. Instead of the original 3.5 kilometres journey to Salfit from Kifl Haris, it is now a route of 20 kilometres along bad roads with a walk over a roadblock in all weathers.
The many restrictions on the movement of Palestinians and the minimal road network available for them to use is particularly galling considering the enormous resources invested by Israel in order to meet the needs of settlers and in particular those of Ariel. For instance, the Tran-Samaria Highway which connects Ariel and the adjacent settlements to Tel-Aviv was built as a four-lane highway a few hundred metres to the south of the existing 505 road in order to circumvent the villages of Mas’ha and Biddya. In the process Israel expropriated extensive lands from Palestinian residents and caused considerable environmental damage by bisecting all the hills situated along the course of the road. Since the beginning of the Intifada, as part of Israel’s policy of ‘clearing’ territory, the IDF have uprooted numerous olive trees on the sides of this road in order to reduce the dangers facing settlers using the road.
The Ariel brochure boasts of convenient and fast transport services to the big centres of population. The Dan Bus Company provides regular transport from Ariel through Petach Tikva to Tel Aviv and back. Also, there is an express bus line from Ariel to the North of Tel Aviv and back. The journey time is around 50 minutes. Egged Bus Company operates lines from the central bus station in Jerusalem thorugh Ariel to Kfar Saber and Netanya and back.
However, for the Palestinians in Salfit, there are an average of 24 rock, concrete or metal gate roadblocks cutting entry for vehicles throughout the Salfit area. The number fluctuates widely, more often up than down, as the Israeli military close and open them randomly.
Education in Salfit
The education system in Ariel is considered one of the best in Israel and includes nurseries, day care centres, kindergartens, 3 general elementary schools, 1 religious elementary school and an extensive high school reaching the 12th grade. The scientific academic college under the supervision of the Bar-Elan University has 3,500 students in 7 departments. In the municipality library there is a big selction of children’s literature, Hebrew, Russian, and English literature and professional literature in various fields. Ariel also has a community
centre that provides a variety of courses and activities from sport, fitness, folk dancing, enrichment and study. There are cultural evenings, theatre performances, films and music studies, where old people and young people can gather and be together.
In Salfit there is a growing population of young Palestinian people needing an education also. At present the student population is around 18,000 students which represents 35% of the population. There are 53 schools in Salfit, 15 mixed, 13 girls, 25 boys. Further education is provided by the Open University in Salfit that started around 5 years ago and which now has over 2,000 students. Many of the students are women or from poor backgrounds or those who have missed out on an education before. It is proving very successful and provides a good education at a very cheap cost. Otherwise students usually go outside the area to get further education – either to An Najjar University in Nablus, Bir Zeit, or out of the country (mainly Jordan).
The education system faces major problems due to the disruptions caused by curfews, and road closures which mean that both teachers and students cannot reach their schools. Around 10 school days per year are lost due to military activities like curfews. There is also a high level of infrastructure damage caused by settler and army violence. For instance, the army has entered the Salfit secondary school 4 times, firing shots, breaking gates and windows. 3 years ago the army went into 6 schools with tanks, breaking gates and windows. In 2003 3 students and 2 teachers were wounded by the army in Kafr ad Dik and Haris.
There is also the long-lasting effects of trauma on the school kids themselves who see so much settler and army violence around, suffer night-time raids and the disappearance of their loved ones on mass arrest raids, who suffer humiliating experiences at checkpoints, and who have often seen their close family and relatives abused, wounded or killed. Teachers report that these experiences lead to high incidents of bed-wetting, lack of concentration, very disturbed behaviour and lack of motivation.
Services present in Salfit
There is only one major public library in the Salfit area. With 20,000 books housed in a brand new building it is impressive with its 7 computers plus a bright and attractive children’s section For access to a comprehensive reference library, people in the Salfit region have to travel to Nablus or Ramallah, which is impossible for most, as they need a permit to travel and these are checked by the military all along the roads.
Many of the villages are attempting to renovate the old parts of their villages, some of which are then converted to community centers. Sarta, for instance, has a place for the youth to learn computer skills and a space where local artists can show their work.
There are at least one or two mosques in nearly all of the villages, sometimes 5 or more, including some very ancient mosques. However, the imposition of draconian travel restrictions and the lack of freedom of movement means that most Moslems in Palestine and most Palestinian Christians cannot visit their most holy mosques and churches that are situated in Jerusalem.
Jewish worshippers and pilgrims, however, are given easy access to their holy places. The roadblocks are even taken up from time to time to make access easy where ancient religious tombs are sited in Palestinian villages, like Kifl Haris for instance. And in Ariel there are synagogues to cater for the different sects and a big central synagogue is being built that will cater for all ethnic groups.
Unemployment in Salfit
The unemployment rate is very high due to the closures imposed by the Israeli state since the start of the Intifada. Probably over 70% of people are without work and poverty is a major problem with around two thirds of the people living on less than 2 US$ per day. Local business and trade is very limited with no big businesses or factories or trade associations. There are just a few small local businesses, factories and services that have managed to survive so far. There are quite a few stone quarries that have managed to continue to operate but even here the Israeli state has interfered to make things difficult, closing down two of the main quarries.
Agriculture is based mainly on olives. Of the 100,000 dunams of cultivated lands in Salfit, 80% is cultivated with olives, 10% with wheat or corn, 5% with fruits and other trees and 5% with vegetables and other small crops. Olives produce higher yields every second year. In Salfit in the good years the yield is around 2,300 tons of olive oil whereas it is only around 600 tons in the poorer years.
However, olive harvest time, which should be a time of happiness when the whole family join in the harvest, has become fraught with danger as settlers come out with guns and try to prevent the harvesting of olives on lands that they are trying to control for themselves. Olives are stolen, donkeys ‘impounded’, agricultural roads are blocked, and the pickers harassed and shot at resulting in injuries and in some cases death. None of the settlers are prosecuted for these assaults and only the most blatant of the murders is even investigated.
In Ariel however, over one thousand, three hundred dunams near Barqan on the west border of Ariel were taken from the nearby Palestinian villages for the building of an industrial area called Ariel West where there are around 100 factories in the fields of electronics, food, metal, computers and aerospace. These factories supply work to about 1,300 of Ariel’s inhabitants. Ariel also boasts of being a technological greenhouse with a science centre, where researchers and scientists develop products and new processes for commercial purposes. The science centre employs dozens of workers
Water Resources in Salfit
The Salfit area is very rich in water but the Israelis have control over 6 artesian wells that draw water from under the area and directs it to the Jordan Valley, the settlements and to Israel itself, while Bruqin and Kafr ad Dik are without water. In fact 7 of the Salfit villages are still not connected to a water network.
The consumption ratio of water is 5 to 1, 1 for the Palestinians and 5 for the Israelis. The US Agency for International Development specifies a minimum of 100 litres of water per day per person but Palestinians in the West Bank receive only 60 litres per day whereas the Israeli Jewish settlers get an average of 300 litres per day. After having stolen the water from the Palestinians, the stolen water is sold back to the Palestinians at a rate 300% more than it is sold to the Israelis.
Only Salfit town has a sewage network that deals with 70 % of the sewage. The remaining 30% and all the sewage from other towns and villages is dealt with by cess pits with the removal of sewage periodically by tank. The Israeli authorities are continuing to block various development and improvement schemes.
Most of the sewage created by Ariel flows into a riverbed at the western entrance to the settlement, and then continues to flow to the southwest. This sewage which seeps into the soil and mixes with the spring water stored in the aquifer, passes just a few metres from a pumping station supplying most of the water used for domestic consumption by the residents of Salfit. The water engineer sometimes has to order the municipality to stop pumping after routine inspections reveal particularly high levels of pollution.
Wastewater from another illegal Israeli settlement, Immanuel, forms a lake of sewage in Wadi Qana causing contamination of cultivated agricultural land and contamination of the water sources near the villages of Jinsafut and Deir Istia.
Water-related diseases are occurring in poor Palestinian villages where people cannot afford to boil their drinking water. This humanitarian crisis is especially frustrating when compared to the nearby settlements with their profligate use of water for their flower gardens and swimming pools.
Ancient History of Palestine
The land of Palestine has been inhabited by numerous peoples over its ancient history, from the early humans who wandered out of their birthplace in Africa, to the present day Palestinians. The town of Salfit itself has been inhabited for many thousands of years with roots that stretch back to an old Canaanite town.
Let us look at just one village, a village which has had over a third of its land taken by force by the Israeli State to build the Jewish only settlement of Ariel, the village of Kifl Haris.
Kifl Haris was a Canaanite village thousands of years ago and used to be called Tamnit Haris and before that Tamnit Sara – which means ‘a piece of the sun’. The name changed from Tamnit to Kifl after the death of the prophet – Kalib bin Yaffna, who died and was buried in the village. Kalib bin Yaffna is mentioned in the holy texts of all three monotheistic religions of the region and is known as Kifl in the Koran. As the people of the village say, the prophets were sent by God for all peoples. Another prophet, called Yosha (known as Joshua in the Bible) also died and was buried in the village. Their tombs are still regularly visited and honoured by people of the three faiths (although this has been curtailed due to the continual Israeli closures of Palestinian villages and towns). During the time of King Barqoq, a Mameluke, a mosque was built and is dated to 1187.
All the family names of the village have an ancient heritage and descend from the prophets Abraham and Ishmael who belong to all the three religions. These names include:- Jacob, Kaneen, Bouzeiah, Brahim, Saliyeh and Obeid.
In 1940 the village had only 373 people living in it but this has now increased to over 4,000. The village has several well respected elders including 3 men over 100 (Abd il Rahim Hassan Obeid, Mahmoud il Haj Hamid Abu Issa and Sheikh Yusef Hussein Kasim Bouzeiah) and 12 other men over 80. All of these men were born in the village, have large families, and can trace their families back many generations to this particular village. They have a strong connection to the land.
The land of Kifl Haris continues to be lost as the Israeli colonising process continues apace. The land is being taken for larger ‘settler-only’ roads to serve the Israeli Jewish-only settlers and to build the Wall. However, Palestine has seen many Occupiers come and go in its long and ancient history and the Palestinian people have survived in the past and will continue to survive in the future.
All of the photos for this text can be found at: http://www.womenspeacepalestine.org/ariel_brochure.htm
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June 10th, 2004
11:25 pm - 4th day of protests against the wall
Villagers from Az Zawiya held another day of protests against the building of the wall on their land. For photographs taken today june 10 please go to www.iwps.info or www.womenspeacepalestine.org
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June 9th, 2004
10:45 am - MASS DEMONSTRATION AGAINST THE WALL--Friday, June 11th, 2004
Bulldozers are working constantly in the village and the villagers have sent out an appeal for internationals and Israelis to come to AZ ZAWIYA.
MASS DEMONSTRATION AGAINST THE WALL--Friday, June 11th, 2004
TIME: 10 AM
PLACE OF GATHERING: In front of mosque, Az Zawiya
They want to have a huge demonstration with Israeli and international presence. Please come in large numbers to the village.
PLEASE PASS ON TO YOUR LISTS
Directions:
Coming West along Highway 5, take the road towards Pdu’el and Alei Zahav. At a roundabout take the direction to Beit Arye. You will eventually come to the Deir Ballut checkpoint. You need to turn right here (involves first turning left because of barriers and then doing a U-turn). The road straight ahead takes you to Rafat and then Az Zawiya.
If you need to take Palestinian transport, go to Qarawat Bani Hassan roadblock and then take a shared taxi from there to Az Zawiya. It is one village south of Mas’ha.
If you need more information, please call IWPS at 09 251 6644 or 067 870 198 or 054 6236154
Apologies if you get this more than once.
Driving directions to Az Zawiya:
From Jerusalem:
Take Hwy 60 to Tapuach Junction (Zatara)
Turn left onto 505
Past Ariel, merge onto Hwy 5
Take 5 to Kesem Interchange
Go around circle, follow signs to Ariel
Take turnoff to Beit Arye
End of road that goes to Beit Arye is Deir Ballut checkpoint
After checkpoint, go right, Az Zawiya is the second village you come to (turn left into the village)
From Israel:
There is a road from Israel towards Ari’el, Pdu’el and Alei Zahav that goes right by the Deir Ballut checkpoint.
If you get stopped at Deir Ballut, please try an alternate route.
Alternate route from Tel Aviv taking Palestinian roads from Haris junction:
On Hwy. 5 towards Ari’el, turn left where the road narrows (couple of kilometers before Ari’el). There is a sign for Kedumim. Half way up this hill, there are two small stores and a garage on your left. Behind the stores is a large frame structure with a blue canopy. It’s ok to park by the garage.
Then walk up the hill till you come to the junction—straight ahead is Barqan, to the right is the road to Kedumim. Go straight ahead direction Barqan and cross the road to the Palestinian bus stop where you can pick up a service to the roadblock at Qarawat Bani Hassan. (2 shekels per person in a service, 10 shekels for a car). Go through the roadblock and take a service to Az Zawiya (20 shekels for a car/service).
Ahmad is a taxi driver fromn Az Zawiya. Call him at 052 267 545 ahead of time and he’ll come to the roadblock to meet you. Otherwise, just take any available driver. Ask for the one whose turn it is. They have a kind of system where the drivers from Az Zawiya who have been waiting longest take the next customers.
There are sometimes flying checkpoints but ordinarily they let Israeli cars through for the settlers. Tell them you’re going to Kedumim.
You could also take a bus to Barqan and then walk out – never tried this but theoretically you should be able to do it.
You could also drive to the roadblock at Qarawat Bani Hassan (direction Barqan), park your car near the roadblock and then take Palestinian taxis as described above.
Another way (may be blocked by military), is the turn-off from Highway 5, coming from Tel Aviv, at Az Zawiya onto the narrow road cut into the rock. Try alternate route above.
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June 7th, 2004
04:21 pm - Women and Girls Lead the Way in Az Zawiya
June 7, 2004
An eight-year-old girl stood under the blade of a digger on Monday, as women and children stopped the uprooting of olive trees on Az Zawiya land for nearly one hour.
Bulldozers began cutting and uprooting trees on Sunday night and by morning, hundreds of trees had been laid waste. Several hundred villagers gathered in the village at 9:00 a.m. and attempted to march to the land, but were blocked by seven jeeps of soldiers and border police who threw sound grenades and shot rubber bullets, injuring at least one person.
A small group of women and girls, accompanied by internationals, made their way around the soldiers and reached the land where bulldozers were working. Though the soldiers attempted to push them back, the women were persistent and small girls sat and stood by the trees meant to be uprooted. After repeatedly threatening to run the women down, the bulldozer drivers finally turned off their engines, but after about forty-five minutes, soldiers threw tear gas and dispersed the group.
Contractors, army and border police were confronted by a group of women and men in another area as well. They again used tear gas, sound grenades and fired shots in the air to prevent the group from stopping the work. This group included Israeli activists as well as villagers and internationals.
The wall will leave the village of Az Zawiya with only 775 dunums, or 90% of their agricultural land. The village will lose access to around 24,000 dunums where they grew olive trees, almond trees, and carried out intensive cultivation of vegetables in greenhouses.
They have already lost land to road expropriations for settler highway no. 5, for settlement building, for military facilities and training grounds.
They will be imprisoned in their village. Az Zawiya is one of 3 neighbouring villages that will be in the same enclave – the other two are Rafat and Deir Ballut. The village of Az Zawiya has requested an ongoing international and Israeli presence to help them resist the destruction of their community. Plans are being made for a peace camp such as that held in Mas’ha last year.
Photos and video are available from IWPS and will be viewable later today at www.iwps.info.
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June 4th, 2004
03:23 pm - IWPS -- Tulkarem Revisited
I recalled the checkpoint at Jbarra from last year, the long gash through the landscape to accommodate the electric fence still bright like an exposed wound. Now the electric fence is finished and travelers to Tulkarem take a small road to the West. There is a small checkpoint and a couple of soldiers asked to see our passports. We noted the stern notice that no Israelis would be allowed beyond this point. Initially, the soldiers did not want to let us pass, but our passports were not Israeli and, after some hesitation, they let us go gravely informing us that it was dangerous to enter Tulkarem.
Later one of our colleagues wanted to join us but the soldiers would not let her through saying it was a mistake to have let us through.
Link to photo:
http://www.womenspeacepalestine.org/Jubara%20Tulkarem%20Checkpoint%20July%2003.jpg
It is clear that the Israeli government does not want either foreigners or their own people to see what is happening to the life of Palestinians in these enclaves created by the wall.
We made our way to a trade union office and spent some time choosing handmade articles for gifts. We met several women whose lives had been disrupted by the wall. Someone from Nazlat ‘Isa, a village with a population of 1,500, told us of the home of a bridegroom being demolished on the night before his marriage last year in order to make way for the wall. The couple has to live in a room at his mother’s. In all, four houses were destroyed along with over 200 stores. The village is now enclosed on all sides by the wall and access is difficult and at the mercy of the soldiers. To read more about this and on how families have fared since the wall has been built, please visit http://stopthewall.org/latestnews/170.shtml and http://stopthewall.org/latestnews/278.shtml
We visited the village of Al Jarushiya, population around 1,400, just 3 km from Tulkarem. We went to the Sultan family who used to have 400 dunams of land. 300 dunams have now been isolated by the wall, 50 dunams have been confiscated for the wall itself, land on which citrus trees used to grow, and the family is left with only 50 dunams. We were told how the engineer made a “mistake” of 30 dunams and 1,000 olive trees were uprooted in error, many buried under the earth from the excavations of their land for the wall. No compensation was offered for the loss of the 1,000 olive trees.
Link to photo: http://www.womenspeacepalestine.org/Spoiled%20land%20for%20wall%20in%20Jarushiya.jpg
The wall is now finished and is about 100 meters from the house. IWPS was told how soldiers patrol the fence at night, throwing sound bombs, declaring curfews, singing and playing music through loudspeakers so they cannot sleep. The villagers see it as another way to force them to leave their land, a voluntary transfer more subtle than simply removing them from their land.
Link to photos:
http://www.womenspeacepalestine.org/View%20from%20Samers%20kitchen%20window.jpg
http://www.womenspeacepalestine.org/Jarushiya%20houses%20beyond%20the%20wall.jpg
http://www.womenspeacepalestine.org/Jarushiya%20and%20wall%20fro%20Samers%20garden.jpg
The farmers now have to walk 5 km to an agricultural gate called Bawab al Kawak at Deir Ghusun to gain access to their land, and then have to walk a further 5 km in order to reach their land 100 meters away. They are not allowed to use a car. In addition, the family has to obtain permits, which take a week to obtain and are valid for a month at a time. Out of 120 people, only 10 to 12 were given permits. The grandfather and grandmother were given permits, but cannot walk the 20 kilometers required to get to their land and back. Soldiers tell them they need a permit for their donkey and that they should name the donkey after the farmers, an insult in Palestinian society. Although there are set hours for the opening of the gates, they in fact are opened when the soldiers feel like it, with villagers having to wait for hours sometimes.
Four years ago, before the second Intifada, 70% to 80% of the people in the village worked in Israel. Now most people have no work and their land became their sole livelihood. Families earned enough from the land to pay for their children’s education, marry, and build houses. 25 families shared the bounty of the land that could yield 7,000 Jordanian Dinars a year, around 45,000 shekels, per family.
Previously, farmers exported their produce to the rest of the West Bank and Israel. Tomatoes earned for the farmers between 2 to 5 shekels per kg. Now a 15 kg box of tomatoes can be bought in the market for 3 shekels. Palestinians in Jerusalem, on the other hand, are forbidden to import produce from the West Bank. The fine for doing so is 48,000 shekels. Either way Palestinians are impoverished.
A sewing factory with around 30 employees had to close down. Workers in the West Bank used to sew up cut pieces brought in from Israel into clothing. At the beginning of the second Intifada, there were lengthy closures with full curfew. Everyone had to stay in their houses for a week at a time, with a space of two to three hours to allow people to buy food. It also meant the end of the sewing factory as goods could not be passed back and forth with the closure.
We also paid a visit to Irtah, a village right next to the Green Line. The village had received many delegations over the past year from many countries, even an assistant to Kofi Annan, they said. Still the wall had been built. We asked the farmer how he felt, a year later. He related how at that time, even knowing about the loss of access to his land and seeing the uprooting of his trees, he had not quite realized the full extent of the crime against them. Farmers cannot now get to their land. They have lost their livelihoods. Israel, he says, has created this separation between the farmers and their land and controls them with the requirement for permits to go through the agricultural gates. In some locations, Israel took more land than was shown on the maps. 400 dunams were taken simply because there was no building on the land. It forms a U-shape east of the highway that lies just to the West of the Green Line. This fertile piece of land is clearly not required for security purposes.
Links to photos:
http://www.womenspeacepalestine.org/Irtah,%20south%20Tulkarem%202003.jpg
http://www.womenspeacepalestine.org/Irhat%20400%20dunams%20taken%20May%2004.jpg
Before the wall, unemployment in Tulkarem was already very high at 75%. Now it is 88% to 90% unemployed. He asked how they can live now with no hope left. “We had always had hope and thought that things were not so bad because the land was still there, but now we cannot reach our land.” When the wall is finished, the Israelis will have all the water sources and 53% of their land in the West Bank, with what is left divided into cantons. “How,” he asks, “can one believe that Israel wants peace?” He does not believe that killing solves anything, and he teaches his child to be peaceful, but now his son responds that his way is not working and has chosen to portray photos of martyrs. He asked who changed his son’s way of thinking. It is clear to him that Sharon wants the
wall, the Bantustans, and he does not want peace. He feels that Palestinians are being pushed into leaving their land or dying a slow death.
There were 26 demonstrations against the wall, with eventually thousands taking part, but to no avail. “Before we had some recourse to the law, but now the world is just run by power.”
We went on to visit Qalqilya passing through the bottleneck entrance, the only way in and out of Qalqilya, that is also a military checkpoint with an adjacent military base. Lots of people from Qalqilya have left and gone to other countries in order to earn a living. Qalqilya used to be a thriving town with Israelis coming on weekends to buy produce. Now it is a dying town.
From the Qalqilya side one can see the full height of the wall, 8 meters high, and the difficulties it brings to the Palestinians. From the Israeli side, one can whiz by in a car and see new landscaping, plantings of shrubs and flowers and a wall that looks about a meter high, and one cannot imagine the hardships it creates for Palestinians.
Links for photos:
http://www.womenspeacepalestine.org/Qalqilya%20wall.jpg
http://www.womenspeacepalestine.org/dwarfed%20by%20wall.jpg
http://www.womenspeacepalestine.org/Israeli%20side%20of%wall%20landscaped.jpg
Full article with photos online at http://www.womenspeacepalestine.org/iwpsreports.htm
Report and photos by Barbara, May 2004
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May 14th, 2004
10:40 am - Open letter from Haris, Salfit from the International Women’s Peace Service (IWPS)
The International Women’s Peace Service, IWPS is based in Haris, Salfit, in the northwest part of the West Bank. It is a beautiful olive-growing area, one of the most fertile in all of Palestine, and consequently has the highest concentration of illegal Israeli settlements. Salfit is the only district in Palestine where settlers make up 50% of the population. The land for these settlements is from Palestinian villages in the Salfit district.
There is little in Western media about the daily lives of Palestinians living under occupation in the West Bank, particularly these communities next to the Green Line.
Army activity:
Picture night raids by the army, with harmless villagers forced to stand outside in the cold, the father forced to strip down to his underwear, blankets for warmth denied to the small children, the mother 8-months pregnant.
Frequent army incursions and soldiers, from the safety of their army vehicles, throwing sound bombs and tear gas, especially into schoolyards, for no legitimate reason. When asked, they give the standard reply that children were throwing stones. When settlers shoot into the village using live ammunition, we do not hear of army raids into settlements meting out the same treatment to settlers.
Curfews are declared at 3 in the morning with an army jeep going around announcing it from a loudspeaker. There have been army raids in the middle of the night, with people's property trashed or the people forced to put their belongings out on the street, hundreds of litres of oil tipped over and then flour tipped on top. Why? The army says it is looking for a member of the family.
Settler violence:
Man shot with live ammunition by a settler. Armed settlers set fire and caused damage to schools in Sawiya and Luban. In Yasouf a group of armed settlers with dogs threw stones at residents and entered the village to go to the village's water source. Villagers have years of experience in filing complaints at the police station in Ari’el, with no success, and so now they do not try.
Basic freedoms denied:
Freedom of movement is a system of permits, closures, curfews, and checkpoints. Result is that goods cost more, the sick have great difficulty getting to hospital, children never know if they can get to school or university.
Travel to get to work, if you are fortunate enough to have work, is difficult and expensive. A bus ride to Nablus from the village of Rafat used to cost 3 shekels and there was a bus service. Now there is no service and it costs 40 shekels to get to Nablus, if you are allowed in at the checkpoint in Huwarra.
ID’s are confiscated at checkpoints, held for hours, causing anxiety and inconvenience to the traveller. IWPS received a late night call from a villager living in Beita asking for help in getting home because his ID had not been returned. Upon enquiry, we were told that there was nothing wrong with his ID, but because the police had held it for so long, it was too late to travel safely. So he was forced to stay in the police station all night.
Freedom of expression:
A demonstration against the planned confiscation of more Palestinian land, this time under the guise of the "security fence", elicited a curfew being declared in the village of Az Zawiya the day before the march. The march went ahead and a large crowd of around a thousand Palestinians, with banners and Palestinian flags, marched slowly towards the entrance to the village, which had been barred by the several army jeeps. Snipers had taken up positions and were ready for stone-throwing. However, there was no stone thrown and demonstrators sat down on the ground facing the soldiers.
Israelis were prevented from attending the demonstration, a democratic right denied them by "the only democracy in the Middle East". Most were not allowed through the checkpoint along the Green Line. The army declared the area a "closed military zone", all the while allowing settlers to travel freely along roads made for their benefit.
Economic hardship:
In Ramallah, which used to be a market for produce from the West Bank, all the fresh fruits and vegetables are now brought in from Israel. Garlic from one Salfit village used to be sold in Ramallah for 80 shekels per kg, according to one farmer, now it sells for 2 shekels per kg in the local area. The same village used to earn 27.5 shekels for a kilogram of oil, now they get around 10 shekels per kilogram of oil.
Many people have not been able to pay their water and electricity bills for months, if not years. Some people have no electricity. Others have municipalities who pay the bills, taking a loan from the bank, and allowing the villagers to pay when they can. A water source deep in the West Bank has been controlled by Israel since 1982. Water that used to be free to Palestinians is now sold to them at 3 or 3.5 shekels per cubic meter, too expensive for them to irrigate crops. Settlers pay only 8 agorot per cubic meter, 37.5 times less than Palestinians. Further, settlers use six times more water than Palestinians.
Unemployment has soared and can be anywhere between 60% and 90%.
Long-term effects:
Pollution created by the hilltop settlements, e.g. Ari’el, Immanuel and Barqan with their raw sewage allowed to flow into water sources, now completely contaminated and unusable, with even grazing animals affected.
Most recent developments:
The wall, entailing more land confiscation and pressure to leave:
The wall will soon come to this area, some village have already received notices of confiscation. In places where the wall is finished, the residents are being forced to apply for permits to stay in their own homes. These permits are not easy to obtain and have to be constantly renewed. The pressure on these families to leave their homes and lands is immense. Already many who work in Ramallah and unable to face the long waits at checkpoints and uncertainty whether they can reach their place of work, have opted to stay most of the week in Ramallah and come only for one day a week to their villages. Others have moved away altogether and gone to live in Jordan, a form of voluntary transfer.
This is a picture of what is happening in just one month, in just one small part of the West Bank, indeed in the part that is least affected by army killings and destruction. There is no security for Palestinians, their lives are under the control of Israel, decisions are arbitrary, they can not feel safe even in their own houses and their future is one of dispossession and penury.
The arguments that we hear constantly in the media are of terrorism and suicide bombers, and the Israeli state responding. The reality is that 'normal' life for a Palestinian is completely arbitrary and controlled by the Israelis.
Israelis are not being terrorized on a daily basis by young soldiers with guns, coming in and out of their villages at will. Most villages we work in suffer these army incursions nearly every day.
We would ask the media to include the context of the occupation and what that means to the fabric of life for Palestinians. The media can play no small part in contributing to a real peace, by simply reporting what is happening on the ground rather than focusing on yet another doomed “peace initiative” and the pronouncements of leaders. Actions speak louder than words and journalists can witness the actions by coming to where the current land thefts are taking place, next to the Green Line. They can spend time in villages and towns to see the difficulties for Palestinians of just moving around.
Come to Salfit. IWPS is willing to host journalists in the Salfit area.
Contact us for further information or direct contacts to local people who are willing to be interviewed.
Write to iwps@palnet.com or phone us: 09 251 6644 (for international calls: +972 (0)9 251 6644
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May 10th, 2004
12:00 pm - LIFE HAS LOST ITS TASTE – A Visit to Jayous on 22nd April 04.
The last time I was in Jayous was just after the expropriation orders had been left on trees informing the local villagers that their land was going to be taken for the Wall . There were large nonviolent demonstrations going on to protest and to try to stop the threatened theft of the land and water resources that would be the other side of the wall. We were shown the route of the planned wall during a demonstration and witnessed the prayers for peace on some of the Fridays when villagers prayed that the wall would never be built.
Unfortunately the wall was built and now, 18 months later, the disastrous effects are clear for all to see. IWPS chose to spend a day in the company of one of the more well-known farmers and listen to his story to gain an insight into the problems.
The Wall here is actually a wire fence with razor wire and a road which the military patrol and guard. Local villagers are threatened and told they will be shot if they come close to the Wall without a permit.
Shareef Omar showed me round his land. It is now fully shut off from his home and village of Jayous and to visit him on his land I had to go through the Jayous wall gate just close to the bottle-neck checkpoint into Qalqilia. He had used his permit to get access to his land but as an international the soldiers let me through the gate without a permit. There is now a similar checkpoint into the village of Jayous from the West Bank side, also controlled by the Israeli army, and which was blocked with a huge build up of traffic trying to get through when I was leaving Jayous to get home. Jayous, a small Palestinian village within a walled enclave, is thus easily and completely shut off even from the other villages in the enclave and can be completely controlled by the Israeli military.
Shareef’s family land is very close to the 1948 green-line border and his father lost some land to the settlement of Tsurgal in 1948 that was built just across the green line. However, the family continued to work the land they had left. Then on 30th October 1988 the Israelis confiscated more of his land for a quarry, and he had to watch while they dug away his trees and soil and took out the rock. After some years they started burying explosives on more of his land to extend the quarry, and there were many explosions. So he went to court and fought for his land.
There are many ways that Israel has devised to ‘legally’ take land from the Palestinians. Shareef outlined three such ways :–
1. British mandate law specifies that land confiscations can take place for the construction of roads, and water or sewage pipes.
2. Turkish law states that if land is not used for 3 years then it can be confiscated – which is why it is such a problem when Israeli soldiers or settlers deny people access to their lands to work it. The Israelis choose to take their aerial photos twice a year - in May (after harvesting) and in November (before ploughing) as these times do not show clearly that the land is being worked.
3. If the land is rocky (contains more than 50% of rocks) then it is considered as unsuitable for agriculture and can be taken. However, much of Palestinian land is rocky and yet agriculture can take place successfully on it. Therefore his family worked hard making rock terraces and planting and growing fruit trees to prove the land should remain with them as agricultural land – they won in the Supreme Court – and proved the land was theirs on 28th May 1996.
Finally, in June 2003 Shareef received a court order saying the explosions had to stop as it was his land. They did, and he does not have to watch any more of his land disappear into the quarry. However, this was not the end of his troubles as by now the wall had been built and his land was enclosed on the other side, away from the village where he lives.
The Wall itself has taken 1,362 dunams from the land of 28 different families. It had been chaos and the maps and plans of where the wall would exactly go changed 8 times leaving each farmer uncertain up to the last minute. The Wall has now been built over 6 km away from the Green Line and encloses all the underground water of the area. Five Palestinian communities are now cut off from the West Bank and their families and neighbours as well as being cut off from Israel and their status is unclear. Shareef said, ‘The West Bank is going to be five large prisons subdivided into even smaller prisons. It is better to eat only once a day than to be new refugees and so people have to get their land back’. He had been in the forefront of the fight to prevent the wall from being built and was devastated by its impact.
He talks about the land being ‘isolated’ rather than taken …….he will not lose hope that they can regain their lands. The Supreme Court decision that ordered that the land was indeed his land also said that the land behind the wall is not confiscated (only the land where the wall is actually built is confiscated) and that he does therefore have the right to farm it. Of the 12,500 dunams that Jayous had access to before the wall, 9,300 dunams are now ‘isolated’.
The military authorities announced on the 2nd October 2003 that the farming land of Jayous including Shareef’s farm was ‘a closed military zone’ but his sheep were in the area and so he stayed with the sheep ignoring the announcement. Then on the 12th October the soldiers made a large circle and caught 66 farmers who were working on their lands and had refused to leave. These 66 farmers were deported from their land and were told that if they came back they would have to pay 2000 NIS and spend a month in prison. However 19 (including him) managed to elude the soldiers by hiding up trees and behind rocks and by 11p.m. they were all in his shed and ‘they lived under the stars’ with food from their land. But as Shareef said, ‘they heard the cry from Jayous’ from their families who were worried about them and from where the soldiers had threatened to shoot anyone coming near the fence. They had no rice or bread and were running out of food. The Red Cross from Qalqilia threw rice over the fence for them so they managed to continue to hide for 26 days. He left only because he was invited to the Social Forum in India to talk about the Wall and its effects. On his return he was not able to enter his land for 5 months but luckily a friend of his was able to get a permit and able to enter the farm and keep some of his crops cultivated.
He was not given a permit when he kept applying because he had been so vocal against the wall and also against the permits. He was told he had only olives and therefore did not need a permit as he only needed to be on the land for 20 days in a year, when in fact he is an intensive cultivator who needs access every day to irrigate and tend his crops. However, after he testified at The Hague and gave interviews to Israeli newspapers and shamed them before the world with his testimony of not being permitted to farm his land and after some internationals applied pressure on his behalf, he was informed that if he applied again he would get a permit. He now has a gate permit valid for 6 months only that gives him permission to go through the gate and onto his land when the gates are open.
The gates are meant to be open from 5a.m. to 7p.m. But often the gates are not open and people have to wait hours to get in or out . Soldiers also arrive and ask them how long they are going to be and apply pressure for them to leave earlier. The permit does not allow them to sleep out on the land either, which they used to do regularly in the summer. Some of them do stay out though because it can take 2 or 3 hours in the morning and the same in the evening to walk in and out, especially for those whose land is nowhere near the gate. The day I was there an old man who had been tending his land had been bitten by a snake and was riding back on his donkey cart to try and get urgent medical treatment. When I reached the Wall Gate some hours later he had still not been permitted to go through the gate back to Jayous (even though he had a permit) and his leg was swollen from the bite.
Shareef showed me the greenhouses that were still productive – they were full of ripening tomatoes that are now sold to a village near to Nablus as the Israelis do not allow them to go into the big cities anymore to sell their produce. They used to supply the 4 big cities of Jenin, Nablus, Qalqilia (which is the largest prison, now surrounded by the Wall and which imprisons 45,000 people) and Tulkarem. The big cities are only allowed to bring in Israeli produce now and most of the Palestinian crops rot because the Israelis do not allow their transportation to market. This year 75% of Shareef’s guava crop rotted due to lack of freedom of movement. The little produce that he can get out is now sold at very low prices – he used to get 5 or 6 NIS a kilo for loquats but now gets only 2NIS.
It is the loquat season at the moment and the fruit-laden trees are beautiful but Shareef is unable to harvest much of the crop to sell because of the Israeli-imposed restrictions and the lack of permits for his workers. Loads of lemons were seen rotting on the ground for similar reasons. He needs 4 or 5 workers a day at least and over the year he needs around 2,500 workers to pick his fruit – he grows avocados, mangoes, almonds, figs, guavas, olives, peaches, pecans, and grapes outside and in the greenhouses they mainly grow tomatoes and cucumbers and between the greenhouses grow cauliflowers and cabbages, beans, onions and other vegetables plus wheat and barley. His is an organic farm and he makes compost. He is the biggest farmer in the area in terms of yields, having 100 irrigated dunams. He can get 36 tonnes of tomatoes from a 1 dunam greenhouse. The water is run co-operatively by all the farmers who irrigate in the area. The quantity of water they are allowed is now, however, controlled by Israel, who can at any time restrict its use.
3,200 people live in the village of Jayous and most rely on the land for their income. Now they have been cut off or had taken away from them more than 90% of their land and only a very few of them have permits. But they all need permits, not just for themselves but also for the labourers needed to help in the work. Many people who cannot get a permit and cannot therefore farm their land anymore have had to abandon their greenhouses that used to be in full production. The sight of the flapping, disintegrating and empty plastic greenhouses was a sorry sight as I remembered the verdant productive scenes of a mere year and a half ago.
Then I could walk freely from one farmer to the other taking a cup of tea here and a cup of coffee there and see the families enjoying their work in the fields and greenhouses. Now there were only a handful of farmers permitted to work their land and they were harassed and uncertain. The soldiers prevent them taking in gas to boil their tea or diesel to run the tractors and the water pump, so they are finding it difficult to keep their crops irrigated and much of the land is now abandoned. The families back in the village now have no means to earn their living. This is yet another form of the slow ethnic cleansing policies that Israel is so skilled at applying.
Looking from inside the ‘isolated land’ across the Wall (which is a high fence at this point), Shareef points out Jayous at the top of the hill and explains how life has changed. Not content with taking away the land and controlling the water resources by enclosing Jayous within the Wall, the soldiers have now put a checkpoint at the one road entrance into the village and control closely the traffic coming in and out, often closing the one way into the village. Shareef also reported that soldiers come in every day to the village and throw tear gas so that many people in the village have respiratory problems. There are now also reports that women are aborting their babies. Animals are also suffering unprecedented abortions with reports that 30 sheep aborted because of a gas canister that was dropped in a farmer’s barn. As Shareef said, ‘life has lost its taste’.
Text and photos by Angie, IWPS.
For footnotes and photos on this article, please visit our website www.iwps.info
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May 5th, 2004
05:15 pm - Man detained, then dumped by IDF
Date of incident: May 4th/5th, 2004
Time: 2 pm (May 4th) to 1:30 am May 5th, 2004
Place: From Jericho to Haris
Description of Incident
The victim is a Palestinian policeman who was on his way from Jericho to Nablus. At the checkpoint near Jericho, he was detained by Israeli police around 2 pm. He was handcuffed and blindfolded and left for several hours in a holding cell near the checkpoint.
Later that day, after it was dark, Israeli soldiers drove him to the junction near Haris, dumped him out of the vehicle and then, via loudspeaker, proclaimed very loudly in Arabic over and over that he was a spy.
The young man, 23 years old, is diabetic. The soldiers gave him an insulin injection and then threw away the needle and insulin. They took all the money that he had on him which was around 48 shekels.
The victim entered the village on foot and banged on a resident’s door for assistance. His first question was “What village am I in?”
The witnesses related how his hands were still discoloured from having been tightly bound with the plastic handcuffs. A kind neighbouring woman gave the man 50 shekels so he could get home again.
Report written by: Barbara and Angie.
Date report written on: May 5th, 2004
The International Women's Peace Service, Haris, Salfit, Palestine.
Tel:- (09)-2516-644. Mob:-054 752 9587
Email:- iwps@palnet.com Website:- www.womenspeacepalestine.org
Operating out of Haris, near Salfit, the International Women's Peace Service monitors and responds to Human Rights Abuses in the area. Part of our mission is to contact the relevant authorities in the case of any arrests that take place in the Haris area.
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April 30th, 2004
06:35 pm - Army incursion in Deir Istiya, curfew declared, one man beaten and arrested and army uprooting trees
Around 20 army vehicles, hummers and jeeps, border guards and police entered the village of Deir Istiya around 8 pm on the evening of April 28th, 2004. A soldier announced through a loudspeaker that the jeeps had been exposed to Molotov cocktails along the road to Kedumim and so the village was being put under curfew. Everyone was to clear the streets and go home. The soldiers threatened they would shoot anyone who was found on the street. They found two men closing up their businesses. They entered the store of one of the men, named A.A. and shot around him terrifying him. Fresh bullet holes were also seen in the façade of a house close by. They then beat A.A. with the butts of their guns, smashed his head against a metal door and kicked him repeatedly, while he was crying out that he had not thrown any molotovs. He is the owner of an Internet café and was closing up his doors after hearing about the curfew. IWPS received a report that something was thrown from the roof of the building where his store is. Border guards took the store owner, A.A, away and he is currently in prison in Kedumim. The captain of the border guards took away A.A’s cellphone and the man’s brother called the phone and spoke to the Captain asking him why he was hurting his brother. The captain replied that he had not been there when the man was being beaten.
Around the same time, witnesses related how soldiers opened a well and shot inside it – it is not clear what damage was done nor why this was done.
Soldiers also started uprooting thirteen trees at the West entrance to Deir Istiya. The soldiers said that these trees were being uprooted because they obscured the view to the road and molotovs had been thrown from this area.
The curfew lasted until the next day, Thursday, April 29th, 2004. There was no army announcement as to when the curfew was at an end and school children who had gone to school early in the morning of Thursday were given ten minutes to get home by the soldiers implying that the curfew was not at an end. But later people started going out and by the evening the army was not preventing them.
IWPS received a report that the army came back into the village around 3 a.m. on April 30th, 2004, throwing sound bombs and shooting from their M16 guns.
IWPS was told that recently there have been many army incursions with the soldiers firing into the air and throwing sound bombs in areas where people gather.
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05:20 pm - Israeli Army shoots and kills young man in Hares
A young man, 23 years old, was shot dead last night by a soldier of the Israeli army. An army spokesperson said that the man had been throwing stones. The bullet entered the right side of the man and exited through his chest.
During the early evening, soldiers were seen around the entrance to Hares between the roadblock and the road. There was no jeep seen and four or five soldiers were seen near the roadblock, and according to villagers they looked ‘ready to shoot’.
IWPS received a report around 8 pm of two shots being fired. IWPS members themselves heard a third shot about 15 minutes later.
The victim was shot dead in the chest. Villagers reported that they believed that the victim was shot with a dumdum bullet from an M16 rifle . According to the police, the young man was shot by a soldier.
It is unclear at the moment if a soldier or a settler were responsible for the murder.
Soldiers at the scene after the killing refused to give any information saying, ‘We do not speak English.’ A phone enquiry by an Israeli citizen elicited the information from the army that youths had been throwing stones at the army. There was no explanation as to why the soldiers were positioned at the roadblock nor why live ammunition was used in response to possible stone-throwing.
Earlier in the late afternoon, some olive trees had been set alight close to the nearby settlement of Revava. The land belongs to Palestinians who no longer have access because of the proximity of the land to Revava. IWPS went to check the land and noticed smoke coming from two lots of land affecting around a dozen trees.
The Palestinian DCL said “The behaviour of the army is not new to us. Villagers are used to the aggression of the soldiers, entering our villages, throwing sound bombs, firing shots. This time a young man was killed.” In response to the army charge that the man was throwing stones, he replied “ Even if he was throwing a stone, why shoot to kill? The army was lying in ambush the other side of the main road to Kedumim, too far for a stone to be thrown and be a danger to the soldiers.”
Please call the army to ask why live ammunition is used in response to alleged stone throwing. The number of the Israeli DCL is 09 775 9219, 09 775 9359. The commander, Lt. Colonel Yaacob Shlomov is at 09 792 2359. The IDF spokesperson is at 03 608 0212.
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April 17th, 2004
09:01 pm - Nighttime incursion and kidnapping of internationals in Kafr Ein
Human Rights Report No. 106
Human Rights Summary:
Nighttime incursion and kidnapping of internationals in Kafr Ein
Date of incident: 13-14 April 2004
Time: Beginning at 11.45 pm-3.30 am
Place: Kafr Ein
Witness/es: Three internationals, several villagers.
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
In the late evening and early morning hours of 13-14 April two internationals (one an IWPS Volunteer) were kidnapped by soldiers who were attempting to inflict further collective punishment on villagers in Kafr Ein.
Two armored personnel carriers entered the village of Kafr Ein at 00.41. There they encountered three internationals drinking coffee in front of a house where there has been consistent use of collective punishment by the Israeli army. The jeeps pointed headlights and search lights at the internationals. The internationals showed that they were unarmed and asked if there was a problem. After a few minutes the internationals were asked to come to the armored cars.
The internationals were told that this was a closed military zone and that they were preventing the soldiers from doing their work and ordered to leave immediately. The internationals pointed out that no such zone had been announced and if one had been ordered then they would like to see the order, furthermore there was nowhere to go to at this hour of the night and they therefore said they were going to stay.
The soldiers announced their intention to speak to the Rifai’ family and the internationals said that they would go with the soldiers to interview the family. The soldiers told the internationals that they did not understand the situation and that a son of the family was either a suicide bomber (but the soldiers could not give any details) or had fired shots into Israel (but again could not say where) or had thrown petrol bombs at the armored car. IWPS has not been able to substantiate any of these claims although several follow-up calls have been made to the Israeli army’s DCL regional office.
The internationals maintained that it was not a village or group that did any of these things and that punishing a large extended family for the accused criminal behavior of one person was collective punishment and illegal. One of the soldiers responded, “They are all terrorists.” One of the soldiers mentioned that they did not want to be here and did not want to do this and the internationals reminded him that he is individually responsible for his actions and that Superior Orders are no defense. The conversation continued in a calm manner until the captain decided to use force to remove the internationals from the area.
The only male and eldest of the three internationals was handcuffed with plastic cuffs and put in the back of one of the armored personnel carriers where he was tightly blindfolded. One of the female internationals was also forced into the back of the armored personnel carriers. They attempted to push the third international into the vehicle but were unsuccessful. She was left at the scene.
Once inside the vehicle the two kidnapped internationals were driven through the neighboring village of Qarawat Bani Zeid and after 15-20 minutes the vehicle stopped in a field. The female international requested that the blindfold of the other international be removed as it was unnecessary however this request was denied and one of the soldiers said they could not remove the blindfold, “because he looks beautiful.” The Captain said to leave the internationals in the field to which the female international objected. The soldier who had previously said that he did not want to be there spoke to the captain and finally agreed to both remove the blindfold and handcuffs and return the internationals to the village after recording their identity information.
The soldiers returned the internationals to the village and requested identity information from the third international which was not provided. The soldiers received a telephone call and left.
The soldiers returned at approximately 10.00 that night and entered the passageway between two family homes and interviewed the father of the ‘wanted’ young man [the IWPS has not yet been able to find out the charges against the young man from the army]. Invitations to be interviewed by the regional commander were issued for the father of the young man, his younger brother (aged 17) and his uncle. The father and the brother attended the interview and were released within three hours. The uncle recently suffered a heart attack and excused himself from the interview.
Report written by: Amy and Janne
Date report written on: 17 April 2004
The International Women's Peace Service, Hares, Salfit, Palestine.
Tel:- (09)-2516-644. Mob:-(055)-376-204
Email:- iwps@palnet.com Website:- www.womenspeacepalestine.org
Operating out of Hares, near Salfit, the International Women's Peace Service monitors and responds to Human Rights Abuses in the area. Part of our mission is to contact the relevant authorities in the case of any arrests that take place in the Hares area.
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April 14th, 2004
03:43 pm - Army again invades Kafr Ein - chops down 500-year old oak tree
Press Release – Press Release – Press Release – Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
REPORT: After last night's incursion by the Israeli army into the village of Kafr Ein, when two internationals (Janne from Denmark and Richard from the UK) were unlawfully detained by the army, this morning the IDF again entered the village, this time with a bulldozer. They went to the natural spring belonging to the village and began to cut down an ancient oak tree.
Up to 100 villagers from both Kafr Ein and the neighbouring village of Qarawat Bani Zeid staged a spontaneous peaceful demonstration around the natural spring of the village to protest the cutting down of the tree.
IWPS is continuing to monitor the situation and to provide a visible international presence in the two villages, night and day.
It has been reported that other villages in the area have also been experiencing violent incursions by the Israeli army recently and IWPS is currently investigating this.
Please call the DCL and ask why the army cut down an ancient trees that belongs to the village of Kafr Ein.
DCL Ramallah, 02 997 0611
Liaison Officer Lt. Adam Avidan 02 997 0112
DCL Commander 02 997 0284
Background The village of Qarawat Bani Zeid has experienced continuing violence from soldiers entering the village which has resulted in 9 deaths in the last year. The village of Kafr Ein has been invaded at least four times in the last month. Villagers have been forced out of their homes at night for hours and made to empty all their possessions into the street. Over 400 litres of olive oil has been tipped over possessions and inside houses, possessions have been damaged. The villagers called IWPS to stay in the village as they were worried about the threats made to do more damage. See IWPS Human Rights Reports on IWPS website.
For more Information contact:
The International Women’s Peace Service (IWPS)
Office: 09-2516-644 Mobile: 067-628-369
Jawwal: 059 716 712
IWPS@palnet.com
www.womenspeacepalestine.org or www.iwps.info
For more information please contact IWPS in Hares at:
The International Women’s Peace Service (IWPS) witnesses, documents and publicizes human rights abuses and peacefully intervenes to prevent them. We support non-violent resistance to the illegal and brutal Military Occupation of Palestinian lands. We live in Hares, Salfit.
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03:42 pm - Army again invades Kafr
Press Release – Press Release – Press Release – Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
REPORT: After last night's incursion by the Israeli army into the village of Kafr Ein, when two internationals (Janne from Denmark and Richard from the UK) were unlawfully detained by the army, this morning the IDF again entered the village, this time with a bulldozer. They went to the natural spring belonging to the village and began to cut down an ancient oak tree.
Up to 100 villagers from both Kafr Ein and the neighbouring village of Qarawat Bani Zeid staged a spontaneous peaceful demonstration around the natural spring of the village to protest the cutting down of the tree.
IWPS is continuing to monitor the situation and to provide a visible international presence in the two villages, night and day.
It has been reported that other villages in the area have also been experiencing violent incursions by the Israeli army recently and IWPS is currently investigating this.
Please call the DCL and ask why the army cut down an ancient trees that belongs to the village of Kafr Ein.
DCL Ramallah, 02 997 0611
Liaison Officer Lt. Adam Avidan 02 997 0112
DCL Commander 02 997 0284
Background The village of Qarawat Bani Zeid has experienced continuing violence from soldiers entering the village which has resulted in 9 deaths in the last year. The village of Kafr Ein has been invaded at least four times in the last month. Villagers have been forced out of their homes at night for hours and made to empty all their possessions into the street. Over 400 litres of olive oil has been tipped over possessions and inside houses, possessions have been damaged. The villagers called IWPS to stay in the village as they were worried about the threats made to do more damage. See IWPS Human Rights Reports on IWPS website.
For more Information contact:
The International Women’s Peace Service (IWPS)
Office: 09-2516-644 Mobile: 067-628-369
Jawwal: 059 716 712
IWPS@palnet.com
www.womenspeacepalestine.org or www.iwps.info
For more information please contact IWPS in Hares at:
The International Women’s Peace Service (IWPS) witnesses, documents and publicizes human rights abuses and peacefully intervenes to prevent them. We support non-violent resistance to the illegal and brutal Military Occupation of Palestinian lands. We live in Hares, Salfit.
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01:04 am - Internationals released
Press Release – Press Release – Press Release – Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
UPDATE: Internationals Richard Minns and Janne Andersen were released by the army around 1 am.
Richard Minns was blindfolded and handcuffed with plastic tie. They were driven away and then after some time driven back to Kafr Ein and released.
The army has no legal right to arrest internationals who were peaceful observers in the village and this incident amounts to an unlawful detention.
Army vehicles are still in the village. The three international monitors are still present and observing.
REPORT
For more Information contact:
The International Women’s Peace Service (IWPS)
Office: 09-2516-644 Mobile: 055 854 988 or 067-870 198
Jawwal: 059 716 712
IWPS@palnet.com
www.womenspeacepalestine.org
For more information please contact IWPS in Hares at:
The International Women’s Peace Service (IWPS) witnesses, documents and publicizes human rights abuses and peacefully intervenes to prevent them. We support non-violent resistance to the illegal and brutal Military Occupation of Palestinian lands. We live in Hares, Salfit.
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