Video Reports of the Hebron, Sheikh Jarrah, Beit Jala and Al-Walaja Protests in the West Bank

international | rights, freedoms and repression | news report

Tuesday April 27, 2010 21:44

by TD - Free Palestine Campaign

Sliced and diced with Israeli "settler" only roads and no-go zones and infested with violent, extreme right wing colonists

Beit Jala : One of the fronts of the popular struggle in the West Bank is now Beit Jala, Bethlehem district. The whole of the Bethlehem district has been surrounded by the Apartheid-Annexation Wall and ever-expanding settlements for years. Now, Beit Jala is being hit even harder by the apartheid policies of the Israeli army and government via the new path of the Apartheid Wall in the area. On the morning of Tuesday, April 22nd 2010, Israeli bulldozers reached the home of Beit Jala resident Mitri Ghneim and started to level and damage the garden of his house. This event was just the most recent attack by Israeli soldiers.

Father and child being harassed in Hebron's Old City

The initial episode in this area dates back to the beginning of March when 300 dunums of land were confiscated. The construction of the Apartheid Wall in the Beit Jala area resumed again after the Israeli Supreme Court's refusal to uphold an injunction concerning the area. According to local sources, at least 30 houses are currently under threat demolition. In addition, 700 dunums are at serious risk of confiscation. Most of this land is planted with olive trees, which are one of the most important sources of income for the local population.

Hebron : Heavily guarded by Israeli Occupation Forces, Zionist colonisers every Saturday afternoon invade the Palestinian Old City of Hebron in a triumphalist show of power, similar to the Orange marches through the Garvaghy Road, under the guise of a "cultural tour," last Saturday, however, was welcomely different in that protesters successfully blocked the egress gate of the "settlers" enclave for a number of hours. The demonstrators also called for the opening of Shuhada Street: This Street used to be the most important commercial road in this city of 170,000 people. It was closed following a massacre on February 25 1994, when Dr Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli immigrant from the US, walked into the Ibrahimi Mosque and opened fire, massacring 29 people and wounding 150. In response to fears of revenge attacks, the Israeli army instituted its official policy of separation throughout Hebron, including the closure of Shuhada Street to Palestinian vehicle and pedestrian traffic.

Sheikh Jarrah : In the ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, Israelis of good conscience along with Palestinians and internationals protest every Friday near the homes of the evictees against the corrupt Israeli judicial system that facilitates this obscenity and the colonisation of the area by Israeli "settlers."

Al-Walaja : Some 80% to 90% of the land of Al-Walaja; a Palestinian town four kilometers northwest of the city of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank has been illegally confiscated by Israel for the building of the Har Gilo and Gilo colonies. In a Catch 22 situation, Palestinian houses have been bulldozed and orchards uprooted due to the absence of building permits which the Israeli authorities rarely grant.

Tel Rumeida, Hebron : Besieged, sliced and diced with Israeli "settler" only roads and no-go zones, infested with violent, extreme right wing colonists and heavily controlled with Israeli Occupation Forces checkpoints and watchtowers atop Palestinian homes, the Tel Rumeida area of Hebron is a veritable hell on earth. If this weren't enough, along comes a fresh obscenity; military orders confiscating three pieces of land and two houses - one belonging to the brother, Hami Azzeh, of noted Tel Rumeida activist and resident; Hashem Azzeh.

Bulldozed in prepartion for a new section of the Apartheid-Annexation Wall, remnant of play area that Mitri Ghneim provided for his four children in Beit Jala