THE HANDSTAND

july 2005

The southern Hebron Hills area has become in recent years the arena of a harsh conflict between the Palestinians - mostly cave dwellers, peasants and shepherds - and the settlers.

And in the past six months, the settlers - radical groups occupying the illegal outposts in the area - have considerably intensified their attacks and harassment of the Palestinians.

In an incident three weeks ago, several haystacks made by Palestinian farmers were set alight. A few hours earlier, four young settlers sawed off the branches of numerous olive trees. And that week, Jewish shepherds brought a herd of goats and sheep to Palestinian fields that had been sown with lentils, opposite the village of Gawish in the Hebron hills. In Beit Imra, some 200 olive trees, each about 15 years old, were chopped down. Settlers drove a plow over a cultivated field nearby and destroyed it. And two weeks ago, 20 settlers armed with sticks and stones arrived and beat up some shepherds. A 10-year-old boy suffered injuries that required stitches to his face, and three ewes were killed. At the end of that week, settlers stole 10 young lambs that had not yet been weaned. In the nights that followed, the Palestinians said they heard the lambs bleating, but could not reach them.

The settlers reserve their most violent attacks for the international volunteers, who sometimes accompany the Palestinians to protect them from harassment. On several occasions in the past months, masked men attacked Palestinian children and foreign volunteers who were walking with them to school. Several volunteers were hospitalized as a result.

The settlers' attacks on the Palestinians in this region are a daily occurrence. The most extreme zealots keep coming up with ever-more malicious and destructive ideas - arson, plowing cultivated fields, bringing herds to seeded fields, poisoning sheep, poisoning water wells and more.

Water shortages are becoming an increasingly dire problem in Hebron district as the Wall's route has been planned to isolate many of the local natural water resources.

Snipers with children in their sights
The army said the two were blown up by a Palestinian bomb planted to
kill soldiers. The corpses offered a different account. In Rafah's
morgue, Asma lay with a single bullet hole through her temple; her
13-year-old brother had a lone shot to his forehead. There were no
other injuries, certainly none consistent with a blast.
(2 UpdateS from ISM June 28th 2005)

ezra nawi
By Nir Hasson, Ha'aretz

A 53-year-old plumber from Jerusalem has become a one-man institution dedicated to helping and protecting the Palestinian cave dwellers of the southern Hebron Hills.

Nawi, in a four-wheel-drive pickup truck and speaking fluent Arabic, coordinates most of the activity to help the Palestinians. He escorts Palestinians to file a complaint with the police, or puts together a group of volunteers to build a medical clinic, dig a water hole, renovate a school or reopen a cave that the IDF or settlers have blocked.

Nawi uses his professional know-how to set up water infrastructures in the villages. He also organized the foreign volunteer groups who escort the children to school and the shepherds to the meadows.

He also serves as coordinator of Ta'ayosh - a Jewish-Arab human rights organization - in the Hebron Hills. He brings groups of Israelis to help the Palestinians with the olive or wheat harvests, and to protect them. He also helps the Palestinians contact lawyers and journalists, and tries to enlist world public opinion to their cause. He has provided them with video cameras to document the harassment. Recently, he organized a vigil of foreign volunteers who spent the night near the haystacks to deter the settlers from setting them alight again.

But the project of which he is most proud is the summer school he organized for the village children. It has been held a few times, and once even included a trip to Jericho. "It was the first time that these children saw a swimming pool or a magician," he says, his eyes shining. "They also see other Israelis, who are not settlers and soldiers."

Is this the first information from the World Bank under the new management of Paul Wolfowitz the USA neo-con?:
The Campaign (July 9th.)will mark the one year anniversary with the launch of a new report: Do-it-yourself Apartheid - Israel, the World Bank and the "development" of the Palestinian ghettos. It highlights how the international community, and specifically the World Bank, has outlined a comprehensive strategy and action plan that maintains and develops the Israeli apartheid infrastructure. Such plans are now guiding the discourse and "development projects" of major donors and threaten the permanent expulsion of the Palestinian people from their lands.

It is crucial to initiate a global debate around the World Bank's plans and direct international financial support for Israel's project of apartheid and expulsion of the Palestinian people. Such a project has so far passed with minimal political or media attention.

We are calling upon all solidarity groups to organize presentations of the book in their own cities and countries. ISM Report

From: neta golan <neta_golan@yahoo.com>
State of Israel uses 1945 colonial emergency regulations to silence protesters against wall

Yonatan Pollak, an activist from "Anarchists Against Walls", was arrested while participating in a demonstration against the construction of the Separation Fence on the lands of the town of Salfit, on Thursday, June 9. The Barrier, at this place, will penetrate 23 km east of the Green Line. Unlike other protesters, who were released after committing themselves to stay out of the "Samaria region" for 14 days, Yonatan was not such a deal, but was held over
night at Ariel Police Station. He was brought in front of a judge the next day (Friday 10th), and charged with illegal assembly and using the 1945 British Emergency Regulations charged with being in a closed
military zone. In the course of this the judge Nava Bechor ordered for him to stay out of the entire Occupied Palestinian Territories for a period of 3 months. Yonatan refused to agree and sign his disproportionately hard ruling, and was taken back to prison. He will be brought in front of a judge this evening, Saturday, June 11th, at 8 PM, at the Rishon Letziyon Court House, in 5 Israel Galili St., Rishon
Letziyon.


The full story

As the some 300 protesters (Palestinians, Israeli and Internationals) left the last houses of the town of Salfit and entered the olive groves, they were met with a large amount of teargas shot by the army.
However most people continued walking calmly, despite the fact that some canisters were aimed and shot directly at the crowd. There was no sign of tension or violence from the side of the protesters.

As the protesters approached the line of soldiers waiting half way through the olive groves towards the disputed land, some of the Israeli protesters called out that this was a peaceful demonstration and there was no reason for the force the soldiers were using. On arrival at the line of soldiers, Yonatan Pollak told the soldiers that this was in reality an open civilian zone rather than a closed military zone; he was immediately grabbed by two of the soldiers who
acted on order of their commander that was standing next to them saying "bring me this guy". He had not been shown a closed military zone warrant or given time to go back at this point.

Only after being taken to the Border police jeep he was shown the closed military zone warrant and up until after his interrogation in Ariel police station accused of rioting.

About ten minutes after Yonatan was arrested, confrontations between the Israeli soldiers and the protesters began and endured about one hour: at one point five soldiers were kicking one person lying on
the ground until he had to be evacuated to a hospital in Ramallah due to internal bleedings; four more protester were injured, two by beating and two by intoxication by teargas and were also evacuated to a hospital in Salfeet; two more protesters were arrested (an Israeli man and an American woman). They were brought to the same police station and were accused of exactly the same things, but they were offered to sign bail conditions to not enter the "region of Samaria"
for a period of 14 days and were released the same night. Yonatan was not offered any conditions and was kept alone over night.

In the course of the past few months the popular resistance to the construction of the wall in villages directly affected has caused a lot of dispute in Israeli media. In a climate where army officers can
openly admit  (for ex in Meron Rapoport's latest article, Ha'aretz 10.6.05) that for them it is legitimate to use illegal means such as collective punishment, illegal arrests, house searches, beatings
and sheer provocation to silence non-violent Palestinian protesters, it is clearly as easy to silence Israeli partners of the Palestinians by any possible means as well. Employing the 1945 Emergency Regulations to limit their activity is another step against democracy.

To quote Yonatan's lawyer G. Lasky: "Taking these emergency regulations that were made by British colonialists to rule over inhabitants of an occupied place in 1945 "out of the closet" and applying them in this case doesn't agree with a democratic state. If
those emergency rules are used to silence protesters once, they will be further used to infringe civil rights in Israel."

These regulations go further than making a civil person subject to a military order, they can deny the freedom of movement, freedom of assembly and the freedom of speech and give enormous power to the
military.

For example regulation 128 states that the minister of defense (who is the head of the army in Israel) can close post offices in Israel. 

Regulation 130 states that the minister of defense can rule to minimize the use of phones for a specific person or a specific
group of people.

For further details:  in English: Eva - 054-7619275  
in Hebrew: Esti - 050-7425484

Palestine, ATree of Life Is Dying

By Genevieve Cora Fraser

A Settler’s car shifts gear

Drives headlong

Into Grandmother

Palestine

Carrying a basket

Of olives in her arms

Hurried as soldiers

Dump a barricade

Soil and rubble piled high

On the roadway

But the settler did the trick

In his own way

Pushing life

Into shadow’s embrace

As blood burst forth

From ancestral veins

Her fruit trees withered and died

Not from IDF bullets

Flying like hail

In a wind storm

But from Settlements

Gushing

Rivulets of sewage

To village and orchards

Below

Death spread

To the rooted Life she once lived

Before Al Nakba’s

Brutal theft of her home

Occupation captured

The remains of her labors

Settlements cursed

Pastoral dreams

Long ago

Verdant fields of the Holy Land

Poisoned and walled in

While Shepherd’s tend sheep

Settlers steal their birthright

Belching forth insults

Insisting they leave

Self-proclaimed

Heirs of Abraham’s Seed

Sow terror

Malice and forethought

Used to rend and cleanse

The fabric of Arabic civil life

So Israel can overspread

Like a cancer

Till dead

Grandmother’s body

Lays strewn on the thoroughfare

Broken as the basket of olives

She held

The fruit she once tended

Is scattered

Crushed and shattered

With the dust

In the road.

Balata Video Collective

Film is an important means of both resistance and communication. The Balata Film Collective was initiated to enable young Palestinians from Balata to break their isolation, challenge their oppression and represent their lives to the world.

The Balata film production collective films, edits and produces movies in Arabic and English. Films produced will include shorts uploaded to the internet and full-length movies distributed on DVD and VHS. Interesting footage will be made available on a server for other filmmakers across the world.

http://www.balatacamp.net