Also, today's protest in Bil'in was successful with protestors affixing posters of Ibrahim to the Apartheid Wall. They were able to reach the fence and open the outer gate before being tear gassed. No serious injuries.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Update on Ibrahim (shot in leg last Friday)
Also, today's protest in Bil'in was successful with protestors affixing posters of Ibrahim to the Apartheid Wall. They were able to reach the fence and open the outer gate before being tear gassed. No serious injuries.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Bil'in: Activist/Artist Shot with Live Ammo by Israeli Soldiers
We were very sorry to learn today that our friend Ibraheem Bornat was shot yesterday at the weekly Bil'in demonstration and badly wounded. He was shot with 3 live bullets in the thigh, severing an artery and a nerve and causing major blood loss. According to the Bil'in popular committee.
Ibrahim is currently in the hospital in critical condition and undergoing surgery. It is not clear if he will be able to walk. Although we only met him briefly during the Bi'lin conference, I would call him a friend because he immediately made a strong impression as a kind and gentle person. He is from Bi'in village, and is a very quiet and warm person -- you would never know what he had been through if you didn't ask. He has been attending the peacful protests in Bi'lin for a long time and was once shot in the head at 10 meters distance with a tear gas canister, breaking his skull. We asked him about the large soft scar in the center of his forehead -- exactly in the shape of the pointed end of the metal tear gas canisters that soldiers shoot from their M16s and from which he now makes his art (see below). He says he was unconscious for 20 days after the incident and even now has trouble reading.
Demonstrations in Bi'lin are peaceful and the effort is deliberately nonviolent. Sometimes young boys throw stones (harmlessly) at the (protected) soldiers, and in this case Ibraheem was trying to (symbolically) damage the wall that is build on his village's land by an illegal occupation army. It seems clear to me that the Israeli soldiers will use any excuse to inflict the maximum harm on protestors, while still trying to maintain an image of a "moral" army. Even assuming that the army has the right to dispers protesters on Palestinian land, the army has long used live ammo or misused tear gas canisters causing injury and death to hundreds of palestinians. This is well documented by respected Israeli and international human
rights organizations like Btselem and Amnesty International.
From video footage it appears that during the demonstration he began trying to damage the Apartheid Wall with stones when Israeli soldiers opened fire. Again, you can see the video of the shooting here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF1ibN40FJEhttp://www.bilin-ffj.org/
For a full report, see: http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2008/06/13/ibrahim-burnat-shot-by-live-ammunition-in-bilin/
above: M16 shell casings and rubber coated steel bullets
The bottom of this flower is a tear gas canister, maybe 10 inches in lenght and quite heavy when full. Also it is scorching hot. One hit me in the arm after falling from the sky, burining the hair off my arm! If fired directly (against safety rules), they can kill.
Various munitions used by Israeli soldiers against peaceful Bil'in protests heaped on an Israeli flag.
Building a model of the wall, with Israel on one side and the Palestinian "prison" on the other.
Ibrahim could usually be found with his art or spending hours walking around the conference pouring water for guests.
Hebron - tuesday june 12
Above: Many shops in Hebron's old city have been closed due to settler violence. Recently, some shops have been reopening.
A Palestinian shop keeper in the old city directs our attention to the upper floors of the shops which are now occupied by Israeli settlers (they enter from the street behind which has been blocked to Palestinians).
Looking up at the stones and trash settlers have thrown down onto the shopkeepers. Metal netting has been put into place to protect the shops and customers. Shopkeepers say settlers have thrown down hot oil and bleach to ruin the clothes they sell.
Saturday, June 07, 2008
More Jordan Valley photos (see summary in previous entry)
Village of Jeflik - homes under threat of demolition. many Palestinians are prevented from building livable homes at all and are forced to live in shackswhile Israeli settlers are given free land and live in modern, California-style air conditioned homes.
Making bread in Jeflik Vilage
Bus breakdown in the heat... but soon rescued by local Palesitnians, bringing big jugs of water and a mechanic who soon got us underway.
New school with order to be demolished
Jeftlik Village in the Jordan Valley
family now living in relative's old house - 6 people in one room. they moved temporarily into an old unused and decrepit adobe shack until one of the young girls was bitten by a snake.
Abdullah's demolished home
above: temporary shacks housing Palestinian families in the Jordan Valley village of Fasayil.
Under the Israeli occupation, the scattered remnants of the Palestinian community are generally not allowed to build new homes or agricultural infrastructure (under the Oslo accords most of the Jordan valley was assigned to "Area C", under full Israeli military control).
We met a man named Abdullah who's family home was recently demolished. He had dared to build an actual concrete home. He is now rebulidng with mud bricks that he and his family are making themselves.
The village has no water or electric connection. They use a generator for 2 hours a day and water is brought in by truck. A 3 day supply for Abdulla's family costs $20.
While such dire conditions exist in many places in the world - the situation here is striking because of the apartheid like conditions created by the occupation. Nearby Israeli settlements draw water from new wells and are hooked up to the electrical grid while the Israeli military prevents indigenous Palesitnian communites from drilling new wells or building new homes. It amounts to an policy of ethnic cleansing through economic pressure and deprival of the basic necessities of water and shelter. This situation is one of the most naked injustices I've seen in the occupied territories.
For more on the Jordan Valley see: "The Jordan Valley's forgotten Palestinians Ben White," The Electronic Intifada, 30 May 2008
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9573.shtml
For ways to support, see:
Jordan Valley Solidarity: http://www.jordanvalleysolidarity.org/
Demonstration in Bil'in
soldiers wait in safety on confiscated land behind the security fence and concrete barricades. protestors chanted and raised thier hands to show they were unarmed. they approached the locked gate behind which lies Bil'ins lost land. after about 10 or 15 minutes soldiers opened fire on the entirely peaceful protestors with gun-launched tear gas canisters.
Bil'in Conference June 2008
The village website including news, photos and Bi'lin's story is at: http://www.bilin-village.org/
More photos of this week's (june 7, 2008) demonstration are at: http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/category/bilin/
PALESTINE TRIP JUNE 2008
Israeli settlers are moving in, squatting, buying or otherwise confiscating property in the Palestinian areas of the Old City. This particular house is owned by an Israeli settler named Ariel Sharon, who never slept a night in the house but bought it for political reasons.