JULY 2006
PALESTINE:
Dear All,
Don't be overly impressed by the High Court ruling below. It apparently did not reach the ears of the IOF. Today, after settlers from Sousa set fire to fields of the cave people in the South Hebron, and Palestinian fire-fighting equipment came to extinguish the blaze, the IOF refused to allow the vehicles to enter. Net loss 10 tons of hay.
http://www.imemc.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19514&Itemid=1
[thanks to Shadi for calling attention to this}Dorothy
High Court orders IDF to
protect Palestinian farmers from settlers
Yuval
Yoaz, Ha'aretz correspondent
The High Court of Justice ruled Monday that the
government and Israel Defense Forces must act to ensure
the safety of Palestinian farmers working their fields
and to prevent settlers from harming their land, property
or persons.
The High Court ruled on a petition submitted by the
residents of five Palestinians villages protesting an IDF
decision to keep them from reaching their fields in an
effort to protect them from settler attacks.
Justices Dorit Beinisch, Eliezer Rivlin and Salim Joubran
said that preventing the farmers from reaching their
lands with the aim of ensuring the safety of the settlers
could be justified, but preventing access in order to
ensure the safety of the Palestinians themselves is not.
The move, the court deemed, "is extremely unfair and
represents a severe violation of basic rights through the
surrender to violence and criminal acts. A policy that
prevents Palestinian residents from reaching lands
belonging to them, in the name of their own defense, is
like a policy forbidding someone from entering his home
in order to protect him from a thief."
The justices also sharply criticized the lack of law
enforcement toward settlers in the Palestinian
territories.
"The violations of the law against Palestinian
farmers are carried out by a small and extremist group of
Israelis, whose acts tarnish the names all of the Israeli
settlers in Judea and Samaria," Beinisch wrote.
"The extremist acts harm not only the security,
safety and property of these local residents but also the
image that the settlers seek to cultivate of law-abiding
citizens, as well as the image and good name of the State
of Israel, in which the supremacy of the law must be
respected," the ruling continued.
The judges instructed the state how to act to ensure the
safety and property of the farmers, and how to better
enforce the law. The ruling said the IDF must protect
Palestinians while they work in their fields while
minimizing the disturbance to the farmers, deploy forces
to protect their property and thoroughly examine their
complaints as quickly as possible.
"The state must act independently to locate
violators of the law, to apply the law to them and to
consider which means must be employed to ensure these
violations of the law are not repeated," said the
decision.
The petition was submitted about half a year ago by
residents of Yanun, Inabus, Burin, A-Tawani and Al-Janiya
with the help of Rabbis for Human Rights.
The petitioners maintained it was unjust for their
protection to bar them from working their fields.
"The difficult picture that has been revealed to us
is of harm caused to Palestinian residents and of
disrespect of the law that is not treated appropriately
by enforcement authorities," the ruling said.
Harassment and arrest of Palestinian workers
by Daivd Nir.
Translated by J. Green
This description was delivered by telephone from one of
the participants in the incident, from Kfar Salem.
Yesterday, Saturday night, 24.06.06, at around 22:30, 26
Palestinians were arrested in their transport vehicles in
the area of Naalim, on their way to find work in Israel.
They were arrested by a police volunteer, a huge settler,
bearded, with a Kojak (blue poilce light) attached to his
vehicle. The armed settler, while cursing,
threatening and pushing, called the police from Modi'in
and all 26 of them were brought there, where they met
another 7 Palestinians who were arrested under similar
conditions.
All the 33 were ordered to sit on a tile floor outside,
where it was extremely cold yesterday, They asked
the policement for blankets, but the policement ordered
them to keep quiet and that anyone who spoke could be
taken to jail. My informant said that he was interrogated
by an investigator who was actually polite, who
particularly wanted to know as many details as possible
about the driver of the transport. The informant
asked the interrogator to give them blankets or a burlap
covering since his friends were literally shaking with
cold. His request was denied.
He told the investigator that once he travelled in a
truck that was bringing sheep and an Israeli traffic
policeman (in the territories) stopped the vehicle and
fined the driver, since the truck was not covered with
burlap, because this was bordering on cruelty to animals
because of the cold. But the investigator still
refused to help.
The prisoners were not released and remained sitting in
the freezing cold all night outside. The prisoners asked
to go to the bathroom and also this was denied them, so
they had to relieve themselves near where they were
sitting. The policemen who came into contact with
them cursed them and threatened them. My informant
claimed that in all the 13 years he had been working in
Israel, and in all the times he had been arrested as an
illegal entrant, he had not experienced such humiliating
behavior. On the next day, at 6 AM, sunrise, they
were still not allowed to use the bathrooms.
They had to stay in the same place even when the sun
rose. They were not given drinking water, and they
all started to get sunstroke and dehydration.
At about 11 AM, one of them, Zaid Hisham Tawrik, from
Kfar Huwarta, 18 years old, began to have convulsions,
because of the sunstroke and dehydration. The
officer in charge (Meir) seemed to panic. He asked
the Palestinians to order an ambulance from Naalin, which
wasn't technically possible. Afterward, he asked
the army for a military ambulance, and was refused.
Then, when Zaid's condition was worsening from minute to
minute, the superior officer arrived and threw the
officer Meir out, into the police building, ordered an
ambulance and Zaid was taken to Tel Hashomer hospital,
unconscious. Right after that, the officer made sure to
take all the 26 to the checkpoint at Beit Sira, since, at
the same time, journalists who had heard the story
started to call, and he seemed to worry that additional
prisoners would dehydrate at the police station and the
treatment he had given them would be exposed.
At the Beit Sira checkpoint all the prisoners were taken
out of the vehicle, but not released. Their IDs were
given to the soldiers at the checkpoint, who were ordered
(by the policeman who was responsible for their
transportation) to keep the documents until further
notice. The prisoners sat near the checkpoint,
under the olive trees and drank from a single bottle of
water that one of the soldiers had given them. At about
15:30, the Palestinians were released on their way, and
went by foot up the hill into Beit Sira. A little
before their release, their were complaints made to the
humanitarian hotline at Beit El, and also Att. Gabi Lasky
intervened, on the grounds that prolonged confiscation of
their documents was not legal.
The Palestinians got to a shop in the village and fell
upon the food and water. Some of them had no money
(not even for a soft drink), so those that had, bought
for them, with embarassment. In the end, the
"rich ones" also paid for transportation home
for those less well off. The informant from Salem,
who had already got home to his village (18:30) said that
his face was still burning from the long stay in the sun
and that he didn't feel well, both because of his partial
dehydration and because of the humiliating treatment he
and his friends had received. The informant gave
permission to describe his experiences with the
enlightened occupation to anyone willing to listen.
.
Medical Workers Targeted by Israeli Army in Raid in
Nablus
May 17th, 2006
Two separate Palestinian medical teams reported Wednesday
May 16th, that the Israeli army injured, arrested, and
harassed medical workers last night as they were trying
to help injured people and take away dead bodies. In one
incident a medical center was occupied by the Israeli
army and two medical workers were taken hostage. In the
second, the army prevented medical workers from reaching
injured people in a building they were shooting at and
then beat them with their rifles.
At 10:50 pm Israeli Special Forces arrived in a private
car at the Nablus Ambulance Medical Service Center, a
private medical service in Nablus. The army later arrived
in Jeeps, occupied the medical center and prevented the
medical workers from answering the phones. The volunteers
protested, saying that they need to answer the phones to
be able to help people, but the soldiers refused and then
confiscated the cell phones of all the health workers.
They then arrested two medical workers, Loay and Moayyad
Qassas, and took them to a building that the army had
occupied. On the way, they met with more soldiers who had
taken nine students and escorted the whole group to the
building. All eleven of them were taken to the 5th floor
of the building where the army had set up snipers. Their
lives were put in danger by the military as the building
was under fire. They were released at the end of the
operation. Loay went back to the medical center in the
morning, but was not allowed in because the army was
still occupying it.
In a different part of the city, at 3:15am one ambulance
driver, Sameh Ahmed, 37, of Nablus Ambulance and a
volunteer Merwan Shanti, 24, of Palestinian Medical
Relief tried to reach injured people inside a building
the army was surrounding. The Jeeps blocked the ambulance
from nearing the building, so the two medical workers
approached on foot. The soldiers told them to go into the
house that they were shooting at, but they refused to be
human shields. At 3:30am, the soldier beat them using
their rifles. They were not badly injured and decided to
wait until after the army stopped shooting at 6am when
they were allowed into the building.
Other Palestinian Medical Relief teams tried to enter the
area that was invaded in the morning but were blocked by
Jeeps from entering some streets. They were attempting to
respond to people suffering from high blood pressure,
asthma and stress due to the operation the night before
and eventually succeeded in transporting took two women
to the hospital.