Youths are buried and Cairo burns

The funeral for the Palestinian I wrote about in my last post was on Friday, and on the same day another youth – 17-year old Yousef Ikhleil – was shot by settlers north of Hebron. I wrote that following the first death, it was difficult to ascertain what happened, as the major media sources and local testimonies offered conflicting reports. However, talking to people at the funeral, and speaking with the doctor who performed the autopsy, we were able to gain a clearer picture of how he died. The following is the report a colleague and I put together for the International Solidarity Movement:

On 27^th January, 20-year old Odai Maher Hamzeh Qaddous was killed by settlers whilst farming between the villages of Burin and Iraq Burin, just south of Nablus. According to family sources, the Palestinian youth was alone and gathering wood when settlers – most likely from the nearby, illegal settlement of Bracha – shot Qaddous once through the chest, with the bullet entering his right shoulder and remaining lodged beside his left lung. Sources say that it was over an hour before an ambulance was able to reach him, and he was pronounced dead-on-arrival at the hospital. There was evidence that he was also beaten: his face was covered in blood, and a left-rib broken. Doctors concluded he died of surgical emphysema as a result of the gun-shot wound. 

The funeral for the deceased was held the following day in the village of Iraq Burin, and was attended by around 500 people from the villages and surrounding areas. A large police presence followed the procession, which lead from the Rafidia Hospital in Nablus - where the body was being held - to the village. No clashes were reported to have followed the ceremony.

This tragedy comes less than a year after his younger brother, 16-year old Mohammed Ibrahim Qaddous, was killed by the Israeli Occupation Forces in the same region of the West Bank.

The frequency of killings of unarmed Palestinians by settlers is quite horrific – two in as many days, and six in the last month – and even the Israelis can’t evade acting on these crimes. According to military sources several suspects have been arrested but, really, this means nothing; the settlers – if any have actually been arrested – will walk free within days. Nonetheless, the fact that the Israeli military is even willing to provide lip service to these accusations is I think a signifier that times may well be changing in the occupied territories.
 

It cannot have escaped your attention that the Middle East - and Egypt in particular - is in a state of revolution. Following the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia, talk has been of revolt: since Tuesday, protests in Egypt have been escalating against the corruption, unemployment and rising prices, all of which are blamed on the dictator of 30-years, Hosni Mubarak. Clashes have spread from Cairo, east to Suez and south to Luxor; today, Al Jazeera stated that the army have been deployed in the tourist resort of Sharm-el-Shaikh. The cabinet have resigned, but Mubarak refuses to go. Against such widespread condemnation, however, it is hard to see how he could stay much longer.

Mubarak’s resignation, or his expulsion, would prove disastrous for Israel: the peace treaty signed whilst he was vice-president was not acceptable to the Arab people and would not have been made had Egypt been a democracy. The popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt - echoes of which are being heard in Jordan and Syria - may well be enough to swing the Arab League into taking direct action against Israel, in the form of economic sanctions. Whilst Israel could perhaps weather sanctions coming from the Arab states, it would be increasingly dependent on a United States which is increasingly unable to support it; it will be very interesting to see just how European governments react, whose premiers are not reliant on the pro-Israel vote, but who do gain financially from the economic ties.

We must remember that the South African apartheid was brought to an end by economic sanctions, not military might; the same, I suspect, will be true in Palestine. With luck, we are witnessing the beginning of the end of the dictatorships across the Middle East and, hopefully, with them will fall the Israeli occupation.

He ain't dead, he's just asleep

This morning we were sat on the balcony of the ISM apartment in Nablus, playing backgammon and drinking coffee. The local coordinator had come round to do an inventory of the flat, and whilst he was there he received a call saying that a Palestinian had been shot by settlers. We dropped what we were doing and left, but he was dead before he got to the hospital. In the chaos, it was difficult to ascertain exactly what happened – even his age seems uncertain. We were told he was twenty; Maan News have him at nineteen; Haaretz just eighteen. What provoked the attack is also unclear: an official for the PA said that he and 70 other villagers were marching towards the Yitzhar settlement when he was shot; Haaretz claims he and his cousin were throwing rocks at the settlers; the people we spoke to at the hospital said he was just out cutting wood for the fire. What is clear though is that the settlers kicked and beat him – his face was covered with blood and his body bruised – and shot him once through the chest. The entry-hole was on his right shoulder, and the doctor could feel the bullet beside his left lung. It was an hour before the ambulance got to him, and now he’s just another permanent victim of the occupation.

We had plans to go to the demonstration in Nabi-Saleh tomorrow, but now we have to go to the funeral. What angers me most about this vicious and pointless killing is that nothing will happen to the criminals: the settlers deny involvement, and the Israeli authorities are not going to bother about one more dead Arab - there have been several killings over the last month, although most by the IDF and border police. The settlers have apparently been relatively calm of late, but recently some were accused of torching a car just south of Yitzhar, and spraying “we won’t forget the evacuation” next to it in Hebrew – a reference to the dismantling of an illegal Israeli outpost near the settlement on January 12^th. This murder will most likely change little, but it will no doubt add to the growing anger in the occupied territories. Today in the centre of Nablus, the PA organised a demonstration against Al Jazeera, accusing them of slander and libel for the publication of the WikiLeaks documents, but this is just a weak publicity stunt to divert attention from the terrible revelations in the Palestine Papers. With arrests becoming more frequent – one of my friends is currently being held in an Israeli cell – and anti-government protests being held across the Middle East, talk of a third intifada is not uncommon. I hope and pray that this does not happen, but only time will tell; things may be heating up here in Palestine and I fear that, before too long, the situation may boil over one more time.

Revolution, revelation and the world keeps turning.

The last couple of weeks have been particularly hectic for the political situation in the Middle East. Seemingly out of the blue, the government in Lebanon collapsed, the Tunisian people revolted, and, yesterday, The Guardian and Al Jazeera began a four-day stint of publishing the WikiLeaks documents relating to the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Algeria and Egypt are on the edge of meltdown, the people are angry and, for once, the rulers are scared.

After fines, abuse and harassment, and with no politicians or officials willing to listen to his protest, 26-year-old Mohamed Bouazizi doused himself with petrol and set himself alight outside the government building in Tunis - this is what started their revolution. His act was committed on the 17^th of December, he died January 4^th, and on the 15^th the Tunisian president fled to Saudi Arabia. What’s left is an unpopular interim government: chaotic; already being reshuffled; and a far cry from anything that could be called democratic, but the “Jasmine Revolution” did succeed in ending a 23-year long, hated, authoritarian regime, and this event is the most recent and most dramatic crystallization of the anger and discontent felt throughout the Arab world. In the days that followed the revolution, 11 people set themselves on fire outside government buildings: one in Mauritius, two in Egypt, and eight in Algeria. These copycat actions are clearly an effort to begin a repeat of the revolution in Tunisia; in Bethlehem, a radio station received a call from a man threatening to do the same in Ramallah.

When the WikiLeaks files began to be published, several conspiracy-theorists noted that none of the released files criticised Israel, or came from the embassies in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv; I hope that today they are eating their words. Perhaps the most shocking aspect, though, of the WikiLeaks publications is not the implicit criticism which comes from the belligerent Israeli position, nor the corruption of the Palestinian Authority – we’ve known about both for a long time. What has really struck people is the limits to which the PA have been willing to offer concessions to Israel and to sell out their own people just so that they may continue to hold on to power. The allegations are far too numerous to go into detail here – and they are all available on Al Jazeera and The Guardian websites – but they include offering to concede almost all of East Jerusalem to Israel, the acceptance of all but one of the illegal settlements in the West Bank, and the recognition of Israel as a specifically Jewish state. On the first day of publication, 50 rioters tried to storm the Al Jazeera office in Ramallah, and god only knows what will happen in the wake of these terrible revelations.

This is day two of a four-day release schedule.

Southward Bound

I never have been one to stay in a single place for any length of time, and as I reached the half-way point in Nablus my little feet got itchy again. I know the rising-feeling well, and also know that when it starts, I have no way of ignoring it; I can’t focus, and there’s only one way I can rest. I packed in my stale old teaching job in Nablus and headed south to Hebron, where the situation is hot and the weather is cold. For some reason, I had it in my mind that Hebron was lower than Nablus, but instead I’ve found we’re higher in the clouds, and the night time chills bite.

Hebron is believed to be the site of the oldest Jewish community in the world, and is home to the Tomb of the Patriarchs – reputed to house the bodies of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and their wives – which, for both Jews and Muslims, is the most holy site outside of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. Unlike in Jerusalem, where the three major monotheistic religions have been able to coexist in relative peace out of respect for the sacred sites, in Hebron the fight over the land is harsh and has often turned violent, most notoriously in the Baruch Goldstein massacre of 1994, in which 29 Muslims were killed during prayer, and over 150 injured. Like the whole of the West Bank, Hebron is quieter now than it was a few years ago, but the tensions remain, and the internationals that work here help keep things from boiling over.

I had been thinking about stopping teaching for a while: I didn’t come here to teach English, but that’s what I got stuck with doing. It was fine, for a while, but the days quickly faded into repetition and the weeks dragged on. Just over a week ago I participated in a non-violence training course run by the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and spoke to some people who had been working down in Hebron, which got my rambling cogs spinning. The truth is that Hebron is in a bad way, and needs people far more than Nablus does. Nablus has its problems, and the refugee camps need all the workers they can get, but there are no settlers in Nablus. Here in Hebron, they are right in the city.

The settlers – religious extremists and twisted zealots – are one of the biggest problems in Palestine. They are also perhaps the most spoilt members of Israeli society, receiving huge subsidies from the Israeli government and round-the-clock protection from the IDF. Their homes are built illegally on Palestinian land, but the wall is routed to protect their homes. They wreak havoc on neighbouring communities, destroy olive trees at night, and seem not to regard Palestinians or the Bedouin as human beings. What’s worse, they’re armed to the teeth. Protected, funded, and above the law, they are a huge threat to the peace in the West Bank, and a constant source of aggravation for the Palestinians. Our job here at the ISM is to watch, both the soldiers and the settlers, and provide witness to ensure that no crimes are committed, and if anything happens that it is documented and reported. There are a good group of people here, and I guess there needs to be. This will be a change from teaching, but at least my old itchy feet can rest easy awhile...

In the wake of tragedy

As some of you will have read, on New Year’s Eve, two Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces: one, a 24 year-old student at a checkpoint near Nablus; the other, a 36 year-old woman at the weekly demonstrations in Bil’in.

Jawaher Abu Rahma was watching the protest but collapsed after inhaling large quantities of tear gas – a ‘non-lethal weapon’ used regularly by the IDF – and later died in hospital. An investigation is underway as to the cause of her death, but as it is being held by the Israeli army we may be sceptical as to any conclusions drawn. Already, Brig. Gen. Nitzan Alon, the commander of the IDF in the West Bank, has claimed she probably died of ‘other medical complications’ rather than as a result of the actions of the IDF. Many who were at the protests on New Year’s Eve claim that the tear gas used was more potent than normal – due to the larger-than-normal crowd expected at the final protest of the year – but whilst this may well be the case, it would be difficult to prove. Regardless of the noises made by either side, the fact remains that following the peaceful protests and violent retaliation a woman lost her life. The story is made all the more tragic by the fact that one of her brothers was killed in 2009, when he was hit by a high-velocity tear gas canister during a similar protest.

This week, the protest in Bil’in was held in Jawaher’s memory, and we had to go along. The plan was that the march would start at noon as usual – just after the midday prayer – and the women would lead, preceded by a truck on which Jawaher’s mother was standing and speaking to the large crowd. Around 300 people attended, but the number would surely have been higher had the Israeli army not installed flying checkpoints around the city and blocked entrance to any car carrying internationals. Indeed, I was extremely happy to note the high number of Israeli women who had made it through the blockade, and at times it seemed that Israelis and other internationals were actually in the majority at the march – a sure sign of the growing distance between Israel’s government and her people, and their discontent at having a government murder in their name.

The march proceeded very smoothly at first; unlike the last time I was here, the protestors reached the wall without being fired upon. It was obvious that due to the tragedy of the previous week the army were unwilling to be seen to be using tear gas too aggressively – and certainly not in front of the world’s media, who had turned out in droves (which, oddly enough, included a reporter from Fox News). In Bil’in, the Separation Wall is actually a high fence, and once the protestors reached it, they began to attack it with wire-cutters - this, it should be noted, is viewed as both a legal and legitimate form of protest against occupation under international law. Only a few feet from the soldiers, you could see them holding tear gas grenades and waiting for the command. They didn’t throw them, but there was a roar of an engine, and all the shabab started to run. If I could give one piece of advice to anyone going to a protest in the West Bank, it would be that when the shabab – the Palestinian kids with the rocks – start to run, fucking leg it, because they know something bad is coming. 

And they were right... From behind the fence came an armoured-van with a water cannon that sprayed the crowd with a bright green, vile-smelling torrent of liquid. This ‘skunk-juice’ is some of the most foul stuff I have ever come across – like a fetid mix of shit and rot and sewage – which makes you choke nauseously if you even get near the spray. If it touches you, it stays on you for weeks, and if it gets on your clothes or hair, you’re better to throw the clothes out or shave your head. I can only imagine what it does to the land. Fortunately, I managed to avoid the shower of filth, but the stench lingered in the air. I must say that this liquid seemed a much better deterrent than tear gas; unlike the gas, it doesn’t make you hurt and angry, just revolted and sick. The van continued to spray the crowd, and kept them back from the wall. The kids, however, moved faster than the van, and before long were at the fence further down and cutting the wire; it was at the kids they launched the first tear gas, but after the first had been launched, the cannisters came falling down like hail. So much for restraint: the army quickly ramped up the assault, and before long, and in a haze of gas, the IDF were on the Palestinian side of the fence. The shabab hurled rocks, the IDF hurled grenades; the protestors retreated, and the press went home. 

All this mess, with its choking gas and rotten stench, lasted less than a couple of hours, but the protests have gone on for years. Another week passed in Bil’in, and now, less than a day later, all the holes in the fence will be fixed. Next week will bring more of the same, and we can only hope that last week’s events do not happen again. Knowing the belligerence of the IDF, I am not optimistic. We came back to Nablus, tired and hungry, and crashed back into our world. For the kids of Bil’in, this struggle is everything they know.



For video footage of the protest, please click here