At the home of Usama and Bassam Tawasha, two palestinians murdered in the days of the Jewish evacuation of Gaza. Violence and arrogant abuse against Samikh, Munjed, Aziz, Hani Asher, the killer settler - the two brothers knew him for ten years. The family of the palestinians make the accusation: It was no act of madness, it was planned. The work of Yeshdin, an association of activists and lawyers in Israel who document the acts of violence committed by the settlers with the silent assent or direct support of the police and army. LUISA MORGANTINI* Senjel is a small village near Ramallah, the Palestinian city that Pagliara, the RAI (Radio-television Italia) Jerusalem correspondent calls the "capital of Palestine", completely ignoring international law; just like saying "Jerusalem, capital of Israel". The mayor of Senjel tells us with price that the name of the village is derived from Raymond de Saint Gilles, prince of Toulouse, a crusador who founded a small kingdom. The village became muslim after the arrival of Saladin.
Together with Lea Tsemel, an Israeli lawyer who, since 67 has dedicated herself to defending thousands of imprisoned and tortured Palestinians, we came to the village to visit the family of the two brothers, Usama e Bassam Tawasha, 28 and 26 years old, killed with two other Palestinians by an Israeli settler Asher Weissgan, on August 17th.
The settlement is right opposite Senjel, built on lands that belong to the village. At first, it was considered a military area, then - as in almost all cases - the first settlers arrived defened by the army. The two brothers together with Palestinians from other villages worked in a small aluminium factdory for starvation wages, and were often badly thought of by their fellow Palestinians because they worked with the settlers. But there was the family to maintain.
So, while the world was witnessing the evacuation from Gaza of around eight thousand settlers, their tears mingling with those of the soldiers, in the West Bank the violence of settlers against Palestinian civilians was increasing, just as the presence of the settlers is increasing with every day that passes. According to Gilad Heiman, one of the spokespersons for the Israeli interior ministry, the number of settlers has increased by 12,800 since June 2004, reaching 246,000 - excluding the more than 200,000 in East Jerusalem.
Watching the television and reading the papers, you don't get the impression that the Gaza settlers are the people who since the start of the military occupation in 67, have terrorised Palestinian women and children, settling on their lands that are rich in palm trees, oranges, olives and bananas. They seem mild-mannered people who only want to live peacefully and who in the name of the unity of their people have accepted the decision that they must leave their houses and the beaches that they loved so much.
In reality, most of the Gaza settlers are fanatical proponents of the divine right of the Jews to that land and of the deportation of the Palestinians. How many times have they said to me "The Arabs must live with the Arabs, we don't have any other country, they have all the Arab countries". Certainly, it is painful to leave, many were born there but those who chose to occupy the lands of others must bear the responsibility
- in plain words, the Israeli governments to wanted the settlements.
In the home of the family of Usama and Bassam - built, following Palestinian tradition, by all the family members - grandparents, uncles and aunts, women and children - their mother receives us crying quietly (not all Palestinian women show their pain crying to the heavens). She shows us the photographs taken during the building of the house, she picks up one that shows smiling men around a table, "this is him, Asher, the one that killed my sons". We look at it incredulously. Asher is the end one on the photograph; he has grey hair and smiles like the others. They knew him for ten years. He worked as a driver. In 2000 he disappeared and then turned up again five months ago. He'd moved to another settlement. It seems that he may have lived in one of those that even the Sharon government consider illegal.
That day, the 17th, they'd drunk coffee together in the morning and Asher, talking with Rawhi Kassab - who survived with a wound to his cheek- said that he didn't want to live any more. sopravvissuto e ferito ad una guancia, aveva detto di non aver più voglia di vivere. Kassab told us this at the Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem. He was really lucky. Asher fired at him twice - first in the truck then while he was shouting "Asher, what are you doing? Stop!"
No one believes that Asher was mad, they maintain that it was planned, like the action carried out some days before when a young jewish man fired wildly at Palestinians who were Israeli citizens.
Kassab says that as soon as Asher finished firing the M16, he ran to the entrance of the settlement and got into the security jeep, as if it had been waiting for him.
Usama had a wife and 6 children, the last born four months ago. Bassam had been married for four years and had no children. His mother told us that the young wife will have to return to her village. It seems this is the rule if there are no children "but the house, what will we do with Bassam's house. So many sacrifices to build it and he was so proud." . Mohammed Mansour and Abdel Rauf Walwil, the other two murdered Palestinians had children. In addition to Usama's 6 orphans, there are another ten children without a father.
Asher Weissgan has said that he is not sorry and that he would do it again. Sharon has condamned him, calling him a terrorist. The European Union took a softer line. In the meantime, a group of activists and lawyers has been set up in Israel to document the violences committed by the settlers. It is called Yeshdin.
I met some of them at the hospital where they were taking a witness statement from Kassab. They also have a web site where testimonies of arrogant abuse and violence committed by the settlers in recent months can be read. I reproduce here the essentials of some of them.
Samikh Mustafà Halil Shatiya, a 70 year old peasant farmer, has an olive grove with 150 trees. He knows them and he loves them. They are his life and his only source of income. Unfortunately, the land is near to the Beit Furik checkpoint 400 meters from the Alon Moreh settlement.
On May 12th at 9.30 in the morning, while he was on his way to the olive grove, four boys from the settlement called to him, then one of them hit him on the back with a stone - and the others immediately followed suit. Samikh fell to the ground crying with pain. Another of the boys stamped on his hand with heavy shoes. Samikh says that they thought he was dead. He che hanno pensato che fosse morto. He was able to watch them as they studied him from every angle. One of them ripped his trousers off and threw them some distance. Then they ran off to the settlement. Samikh tried to get help but his left hand was broken in three places. He still has the plaster on and continues to suffer pain in his back and vomiting.
Munjed Hasan Tamini, a 28 year old peasant farmer, has land near to the Eil el Kos spring, near to Ramallah, where there are water pools built by his ancesters. The pools are empty and filled with stones.
The water source is in front of the Israeli military base, which is also the entrance to the Halamish settlement. The settlers, with the protection of the soldiers, wanted to take over the water source and Munjed's land. They entered his land and started to restore the pools. They cut off the water to the village as a punishment and the tomatos planted in the field have been uprooted.
So, Munjed planted beans, until the settlers decided to invade his field. Munjed arrived with other farmers and some children from the village. The settlers fired on them and beat them. The security man from settlement told them to go away and said that the land was territory of the Israeli state and threatened to destroy all the olive trees - and started to break their branches. The soldiers from the military camp approached and reassured Munjed. They checked his ID card and promised to keep the settlers away from his land.
But on March 18th, around 1 pm, the settlers returned. There were about 10 Palestinians there and the settlers started to fire. The soldiers arrived and this time they didn't reassure, but were decidedly on the side of the settlers. They immobilised and beat the Palestinians. They tied their hands after they had stripped them of their T-Shirts to use as blindfolds. They put them to stand against the wall. They pointed their weaponsat them, then they took them away in a jeep. They threatened them and beat them again. Munjed says that he felt that the soldier didn't see him as a human. They were released, or rather thrown out of the jeep, after 9pm. The land is now in the hands of the settlers.
Aziz Abdul Karim Salman Hneini, a 70 year old shepherd, lives in the village of Beit Dejan and rides a donkey when he takes his flock to pasture. He did so on May 24th. The land is at the foot of a hill where a road passes leading ot the settlment of Eilon Moreh. Around 5pm he saw a white jeep that went up towards the road and stopped at a distance. He feared they there might be settlers so he turned for home. But a man and four boys coming down the hill with stones in their hands called him to stop. While he asked what they wanted, they siezed his shepherds crook and one of the boys started to hit him about the head and face. The others kicked him. In the end they took his headdress to humiliate him. It all lasted around 15 minutes and the jeep waited, and the went away immediately after.
The adult man who attacked him is the same who the year before, with other settlers, had beat him and robbed him. The shepherd reported all this to the Isaeli police, but nothing happened. Accompanied by a grandchild he arrived bleeding at the Beit Fouriq checkpoint, after he had waited 40 minutes for an ambulance to got the the hospital in Nablus.
Hani Muhammad Abdallah Amer, a peasant farmer born in 1957, has six children and lives in the village of Masha. His house is west of the wall and is the only house that remains in the Israeli part. Naturally it is territory occupied in '67. Twenty meters from his house accross a road are the houses of the Elkana settlement. Since the wall was built, the problems have started on a daily basis. They throw stones and when Hani returns from work he is met by settlers who are waiting for him on the bridge and they throw stones, bottles and garbage. They have broken the container in which he collects rainwater. Hani has reported the incidents to the police, but his accusations have not had any effect. On June 13th at 1.05am, seven boys from the settlement started to throw stones at his house. It lasted 45 minutes. He called the police but when they arrived the boys had gone. The signs of the stones on the walls and broken glass remained. He files report after report without ever getting a reply.
The Italians from Operation Columba also know something about the abuses and violence of the settlers. They are working the the villages around Hebron and have witnessed and sometimes suffered their aggressions. Women in Black have also seen and experienced it, when they were in Hebron on August 21st On Shoada street, in the city centre, which is in the hands of the settlers, fanatical, rabid settlers attacked them, hitting, kicking and throwing stones and every other conceivable object with the blessing of the Israeli soldiers, who were stationed at the checkpoint on the road that is already forbidden to the Palestinians.
Believing in Jerusalem
Date posted: May 27, 2013
By Joharah Baker for MIFTAH
Last week, Israel barred a UNESCO fact-finding mission from entering the country, charging that the Palestinians had ‘politicized’ the mission before it had even arrived. The mission was tasked with looking into conditions of historical sites in the Old City of Jerusalem, something Israel apparently found to be very threatening.
Looking at the state of Jerusalem’s eastern sector today, it is understandable why Israel would not want UNESCO or anyone else walking around the Old City, especially the Palestinian-populated parts of it. Because anyone who does, will see the devastation that Israel and its settlers have wreaked on one of the oldest and most beautiful cities in the world.
Excavation works are being conducted in and around the Aqsa Mosque to make way for more Jewish construction at the place where Waqf authorities say Ottoman and Abbasid artifacts have long been tucked away. A Muslim graveyard is being dug up just outside the Old City’s Jaffa Gate, to build – ironically – a museum of tolerance. Today, two stores were forcefully taken over by Jewish settlers in Al Hakari, one of the neighborhoods in the Muslim quarter and every day, it seems that more and more homes are either being demolished by Israeli municipality authorities or being taken over by Jewish settlers.
The “Judiazation” of Jerusalem is a term many Palestinians and Arabs use for what Israel is doing in the city. In a nutshell, it is the long-term plan Israel is gradually carrying out to change the Arab Palestinian character of Jerusalem. This means demolishing old and historical structures, displacing Palestinians, handing over their homes to settlers and trying to erase the Palestinian or Arab history of the city.
The sad truth is that, on the surface, Israel has succeeded in this to a large extent. Pockets of Jewish settlers now live in the heart of Muslim quarters and aim to take over more and more. Sheikh Jarrah, one of the more affluent Palestinian neighborhoods of Jerusalem, is now pierced with Jewish flags waving from homes that have been wrestled from their Palestinian owners, and Israel’s light rail train cuts right down through Palestinian neighborhoods outside of the city center. The train, of course, is not meant to service the Palestinian population but rather to connect Jewish neighborhoods and settlements in the city, but the area confiscated from Shufat and Beit Hanina for its construction simply fell into the plan.
What the UNESCO mission would not have seen even if they made it into the Old City is the overall humiliation that the Palestinian population of Jerusalem must endure on a daily basis because of Israel’s military occupation. Trips to the Israeli ministry of interior must be made just to prove that one lives in the city for fear that their residency rights may be revoked; young Palestinian men are stopped randomly by Israeli soldiers to check their ID cards or just to harass them, and settlers are always given the luxury of maximum security whenever they walk the streets. If settlers want to march through the city, the Palestinians are told to close their shops, are barred for hours from reaching their homes if they run along the path of the march and are always the ones blamed if any kind of confrontation between the two sides breaks out.
Jerusalem is being squeezed by these measures more and more each day. But there is always that glimmer of hope, that strength that shines through proving that all is not lost. On Shavuot, Israeli settlers and extremists poured into the Old City, singing loudly, banging on the shop doors and waving huge Israeli flags. The sight was disconcerting to say the least. However, the afternoon of that same day, at Damascus Gate, passersby were met with a completely different scene. Palestinian flags waved in determined Palestinian hands under the threatening eye of heavily armed Israeli police and soldiers. The youths were fearless, demanding freedom, with strong, unrelenting voices.
The sight of the Palestinian flag waving at the entrance to Damascus Gate was a breath of fresh air. All is not lost and never will be because hope is eternal and determination and strength come from a never-ending spring.
That day at Damascus Gate is what all Palestinians must keep in their minds’ eye in spite of the daily oppression of the occupation. No matter how many missions Israel bars from entering or how many houses it takes over, there will always be those brave souls who, despite the risks, will always raise Palestine’s flag.
Joharah Baker is a Writer for the Media and Information Department at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). She can be contacted at mid@miftah.org.
Let Mohammed rest in peace
Date posted: May 20, 2013
By Joharah Baker for MIFTAH
There is no point falling into the pit of countering the claims being made about the death of Mohammed Al Durra, the 12-year old boy from Gaza whose videotaped killing was seen around the world. The boy, crouching in fear behind is equally afraid father as bullets whizzed around them, was killed admittedly by the Israeli army. Later, the army recanted after investigating the tape, saying Durra was killed by Palestinian fire instead. Well now, Israel is changing its story altogether, saying he was not killed at all. In fact, he was probably not even wounded and the French channel that broadcast the footage and brought some pretty bad rap to Israel, had most likely filmed a charade.
The reason why I will not waste my time countering this claim is that even with the great lengths the Israeli government went to to prove that the boy was never killed, it could not provide any irrefutable proof that Mohammed Al Durra – who would be 25 now – is still alive. No pictures, no testimonies, no hospital or morgue officials giving statements to refute his death, have been provided. Only sketchy information about ‘poor quality footage’ and the fact that it seems as though the boy moved his arm after he had slumped over his father following the explosion.
My point is this: indeed, Mohammed Durra’s death was at least one of the catalysts that fueled the second Intifada, and thus, was an important event in the history of the Palestinians. However, more importantly – most importantly to me –is the fact that this is about a boy who died in sheer terror, with his distraught father futilely trying to shelter him from the barrage of bullets coming their way.
Mohammed Al Durra was a boy, with a life, a family and friends. He died a horrible death and now he is being made to die a second one. I did not know Mohammed or his family, but I can only imagine how awful it must be for them to read these claims now and feel the pain of losing their child all over again. If nothing else, this is disrespect for human life of the worst kind.
Some may postulate that the rehashing of the Durra case is a personal jab at the French cameraman who shot the footage, Charles Enderlin. Perhaps. But as a Palestinian who has seen the pain endured by numerous families who receive the horrible news that their sons or daughters have been killed by the Israeli army, my concern is for his family and for his memory. He should be left to rest in peace. If Israel has axes to grind with French journalists or with the international community for holding it accountable for its actions, then so be it. Israel is not lacking in the public relations department.
That being said, there is just one decent thing left to do. Leave Mohammed Al Durra and his memory alone.
Joharah Baker is a Writer for the Media and Information Department at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). She can be contacted at mid@miftah.org.
Recognition and justice is our demand
Date posted: May 13, 2013
By Joharah Baker for MIFTAH
This week Palestinians will commemorate Al Nakba, the catastrophe that befell the Palestinian people when Israel was founded. Every year, Palestinians hang placards pointing to the right of return, they carry keys symbolizing the homes they were forced to leave and could not return to and remember the Palestine that was lost to them 65 years ago.
This year will be no different. Every May 15, Palestinian recall their catastrophe and demand justice. They demand that they are granted the right of return for those who were made refugees virtually overnight and were then relegate to a life they did not choose. But more than anything, they demand recognition of the tragedy that befell them rather than a denial that it ever happened, or worse, that it was of their own making.
It has been 65 years since Israel was established in 1948, which means those who were cast into exile are either very old or have long passed. Those who experienced the Nakba are now few and far between, clinging to those few precious memories of a small garden in front of their house in Jaffa or of the salty smell of the sea in their neighborhood in Haifa. The rest of us are either descendants of these refugees or ordinary Palestinians who feel their cause is our cause because we are one people.
But the Palestinians have made one thing clear. The refugee issue will not die with the last refugee. It is felt nationwide, the loss, the injustice and the fact that those who were forced from their homes have mostly passed, longing for their beloved homes.
We cannot turn back time. What was lost has been altered, destroyed, changed or taken over by Israel’s newcomers. What we can do is hold on to the right to be recognized, for the injustice to be rectified in word and deed and for Palestine to never be lost in our minds or hearts.
Joharah Baker is a Writer for the Media and Information Department at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). She can be contacted at mid@miftah.org.
