1- Prisoners for 100.000 at the stroke of a pen 2- A War Against Children 3- The story of Mohammad ======================================================================== Prisoners for 100.000 at the stroke of a pen: Israeli Military Unmasks New plan for Wall to surround Tulkarem. The town of Tulkarem has been dealing with the devastating consequences of the Apartheid Wall since its construction started last year. On the morning of 29th January 2003 farmers arrived at their fields to find that the future of the local community is being further assaulted. A new military order had been nailed to their trees. It informed them that their land will be confiscated in order to build a 9.9 km long wall. It demanded that the farmers attend a meeting later that day or forfeit their right to compensation. Many will not attend such meetings, refusing to recognize the right of the Israeli occupation forces to determine the future of Palestinians´ land. This latest Apartheid Wall will complete the encirclement of Tulkarem and make the population of the city prisoners -requiring them to pass through a gate in the wall every time they travel. This policy of caging a large community has already been enforced in the city of Qalqilya with a devastating impact on the community. It is widely believed that the erection of this wall constitutes part of a long planned strategy of the Israeli regime to "encourage transfer" or ethnically cleanse the area by making it practically impossible to live in the city. Communities which will have land destroyed by this latest Wall include Nor Shamis refugee camp, Bala'a, Iktaba, Shofi, Ezbit, Shofi, Kufur Labad, Anabta, Jaroshiea, Mas Qafi and Shweka. Already many greenhouses, olive trees, wells and agricultural land have been destroyed or separated from their Palestinian owners in the first stage of the Apartheid Wall's construction, representing a massive de facto annexation of Palestinian land. This new second stage of the Apartheid Wall will continue this destruction and further the "Ghettoization" of the West Bank. According to the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee over 236 dunums of land will be lost by the actual construction of the Wall around Tulkarem while over 23,000 dunums will be included in the enclosed area. The Wall will also destroy a large part of the Nor Shamis forest, a natural habitat for a variety of rare birds. ISM will be steadfast in its support of Palestinian non-violent resistance to this latest illegal attack on the land of Palestine. We call on the Israeli regime to abandon this latest step towards further ghettoizing Palestinian communities and violating basic human rights. We call on the Israeli people to oppose the grave violations of human rights being committed in their name. We call upon all supporters of human rights around the world to boycott Israeli goods and lobby their governments to impose trade and diplomatic sanctions until it abandons the construction of the Wall and withdraw from the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which it has illegally occupied since 1967. Join the campaign against the Apartheid Wall by contacting PENGON at: Jamal 052 285 610 / 026 565 887 email: info@pengon.org For further information on ISM in Tulkarem contact: ˇ Drew 052-371 338 / 067-658 873 ˇ Radhika 067-628 514 / 052-574 754 ======================================= Michael ISM Media Coordinator Beit Sahour Occupied Palestine Phone: +972-2-2774602 Cell: +972-67-628439 web: http://www.palsolidarity.org ======================================================================= 2- A War Against Children IWPS Report #28, February 10, 2003 On November 27, Ali was a normal teenager living in a small Palestinian village under Israeli occupation. He went to school, whenever it was open. He helped his parents harvest their olives and his sisters care for the chickens. He never got in trouble. He hung out with his friends and his older brother, Jihad, who was studying for his Taojihi, the final examination that high school students must pass to go on to university. Now Ali is a casualty of the Israeli government’s war on Palestinian youth, especially the young men it fears are most likely to become involved in resistance to the occupation. Since November 28, Ali, who was then only 14 years old, and Jihad, 17, have been sitting in Israeli military prisons. Ali is charged with throwing stones at Army jeeps and with being the lookout for someone planning to throw a Molotov cocktail. Like nearly all kids who are taken for “questioning,” he “confessed” to the stone throwing, but he has consistently denied being involved in the Molotov cocktail incident, despite the heavy coercive tactics of Israeli interrogators.[1] Kids charged with throwing stones who have not been arrested before are normally released after questioning. The Molotov cocktail charge is considered much more serious and is probably the reason Ali is still in prison. IWPS was contacted about the arrests the night they occurred by a friend in Deir Istya. We made phone calls for the next several days and finally located the boys, though there was a lot of confusion about where they actually were. Initially, the Army denied having them at all. Then, someone reported that Ali had called his parents and said he was in Qdumim, a military prison in the Tulkarem district. Qdumim is the nearest detention center to our area and most of those arrested in the villages in Salfit start out there. Qdumim does not hold children, however, so officers we spoke with denied that the kids were there. Hamoked, an Israeli legal organization which traces prisoners, said that they were in Qdumim. The IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) Spokesperson’s office, which also traces prisoners, called and told us they were in Shechem prison near Nablus. It was nearly a week after Ali and Jihad were arrested that anyone was able to tell their parents definitely where they were: Ali was in Qdumim and Jihad had been moved to Ofer, near Ramallah. Since Hamoked was already involved in the case, we felt there was nothing more we could do. They connected the family with Defense of Children International, which assigned a lawyer to represent Ali. Israeli law requires that children be allowed to post bail, and that they be represented by a lawyer at any hearing. However, Ali’s family was never given the opportunity to bail him out. He was taken to a military court and with no lawyer present, ordered held until March 4, when there would be another hearing to determine his fate. On Thursday, December 27, Ali’s father came to see us with a friend who speaks English. He wanted to know what we could do for Ali. He told us that Ali had never been visited by a lawyer or anyone else, in the month that he had been held. His lawyer had met with the prosecutor and tried to get her to drop the charges, but she refused to do it. He had not filed any papers in court. We offered to go with him and his wife if they wanted to try to visit. He said they would like that very much. I called the Army office in charge of the prison to see if that would be possible on Friday. The guy I talked to said it was impossible that Ali was there, that they never hold anyone that long and certainly not children. I said that we knew Ali was there, and we were so anxious to have the visit because it is illegal for a child to be imprisoned without representation and without being able to see his family. He said, “I agree, that’s why I don’t believe it.” He said he would check into it, and I should call back in half an hour. When I called in half an hour, I was told that he had left. Frustrated, I called an Israeli lawyer we know and he offered to call the prison. A little while later, he called back and said that he had confirmed that Ali was there and that we could visit. I asked if it would be a problem to go on Friday morning, because I know that Friday is kind of a half-day-off for a lot of Israelis and especially government offices don’t tend to work much on Fridays. He said no, he was told there is visiting on Friday. On Friday morning, Ali’s parents, Abu and Um Saad, picked up Karin and me at 8:30 and we went to Qdumim. They had brought a tote bag with clothes and some snacks to give him. Karin explained to the soldier in charge that the family wanted to see their son. He immediately said, “There are no visits in this prison.” I said, “But he’s only 14.” He said, “Oh,” and went into his booth to call someone, and I thought maybe they wouldn’t give us trouble about it. But when he hung up, he said the expected, “I'm sorry, but there are no visits allowed.” I said, “But I had an Israeli lawyer call and he assured me we would be able to visit.” “Yes,” he said, “they told me the Israeli lawyer called, but there are no visits here.” Karin began to list the illegalities about the detention: Ali had been denied bail, held without representation, held in an adult facility, and all we are asking is that at least his mother be allowed to visit her son. “No,” he said, “but I can bring him his clothes.” We asked to speak to whomever was in charge, and he said, “There’s no one in charge.” He said that the commander of the prison was not working because of the Shabbat, and we asked to speak to whoever replaces him. He kept insisting that there was no replacement. “There are only simple soldiers here now,” he kept saying. “Well, if there were an emergency, like a riot or a medical emergency, who would you call?” “The doctor,” he said. “Well, okay, but if there were a riot?” “Well, if there were a riot, we would deal with it; we're the guards. We can deal with that, but not visits.” This struck me as a little ridiculous, that “simple soldiers” would be entrusted to put down a riot but not to let a 14-year-old visit his mother. We stood there arguing for quite a while, getting nowhere. I kept thinking that he could just decide to ignore us, we weren’t in the way, but he didn’t. He seemed to want to help. “I’m sure if you come back on Sunday, it will be all right. I'm sorry you came all this way,” he added when I started to complain. “Look,” he confided, “I don't care. I don't even want to be here. I just want to go home.” This is a refrain we hear a lot from soldiers. Finally the surrogate commander came and told us that no exception could be made because “we have 30 or 40 prisoners here, and if we do it for you….” He didn't bother to complete the sentence. Karin and I both argued at once, “But no other children.” “No,” he said, “because we don’t hold children here.” “So you're making an exception already,” I said, “so you can make another one.” I called the Israeli lawyer who had told me that we would be able to visit, and he was incredulous. “They won’t let them visit their own son?” I got the major to talk to him, and when he gave me back the phone, Shamai said, “He’s rude and violent. He’ll never let you in.” He told me to tell him that he’d get in trouble, that he could be personally sued, and gave me the citation of a recent Supreme Court decision in which prison authorities had had to pay 5,000 shekels to the family of a Palestinian detained illegally. I wrote all this down and went to talk to the guy in charge, whose name is Nir. He was on the phone. When he hung up his phone call, he said to me quietly, “I’ll take the mom to visit her boy.” I was so shocked, I had to ask him to repeat it. I went with Um Saad into the prison. The guards searched the bag of clothes she had brought and said that the little bag of snack food was not allowed. Nir set up two chairs in a small fenced corridor, and told Um Saad to sit in one and Ali was led in, not cuffed or shackled, and they sat facing each other. He is a handsome teenager, taller than his mother, with deep black wavy hair. Instinctively, I reached for my camera, and one of the guards snapped, “No pictures,” but Nir said I could take one picture and then leave. I stood outside the fence with all the soldiers, who kicked around a soccer ball and played with a little dog while Ali and his mother visited for about 20 minutes, constantly touching. She kept adjusting the sleeves of his sweatshirt. Much of the time, they were both crying. After the visit, everyone’s spirits were high, though of course it was hard for Um Saad to see her son go in prison. We went back to Deir Istya, and Karin was finally able to reach the lawyer, who said he was going to file a petition on Sunday to try to get Ali released, or at least moved to an appropriate facility for juveniles, where his family could visit. But the following week, we talked to the family and they had never heard from the lawyer. We tried to get in touch, and were never able to reach him. We asked some other lawyers for advice, but no one could do anything else unless the family could pay them a lot, which they cannot. Two weeks later, a few days after Ali turned 15, Nijmie and I went with his parents to try to visit him again. I had tried repeatedly to reach the commander to see if he would allow it, but he was never available. When we got there, we again talked to a young soldier, a Yemeni Jew who spoke some Arabic, and who also was very polite but told us no, no one could visit. We argued and asked to talk to someone in charge, and eventually the commander of the military base came and then the commander of the prison, but they all said the same thing: only a lawyer could visit, and only with three days’ notice. This time, we were not able to persuade them. The commander said the previous visit had been allowed without his authorization, and “It was a nice thing to do, but it will not happen again. Not today, not ever.” A few days after that attempted visit, Ali was moved to Huwara prison near Nablus. We had been told that once he was moved to another facility, the family could visit, but Huwara does not allow visitors either, and we have not been able to get permission for the family to see their son. He has now been held more than two months. The Red Cross has visited him once, but he still has never seen or spoken to a lawyer. Ali is one of over 2000 children under 17 who have been arrested by the since the beginning of the Second Intifada two and a half years ago. Defense for Children International estimates that 300-350 are currently being detained. Several dozen are held in the infamous Ketziot prison in the Negev desert, where prisoners were recently beaten and tear gassed for protesting the inhuman conditions under which they are forced to live. The Mandela Human Rights Institute reports that in this Intifada, there has been a dramatic increase in the detention of youngsters 13 and older. On the night of January 15, the Army entered Hares and arrested an 11-year-old and his 13-year-old brother on their way home from the barber shop. (They were released the next morning.) Under Israeli law, children under 16 are supposed to be held at Telmond prison, inside Israel, and about 80 currently are. Ali’s lawyer has talked about having him moved to this facility, but if that happens, his family will have no chance to see him, since West Bank Palestinians are not allowed into Israel to visit their relatives. Moreover, a recent report by the Palestinian organization LAW concludes that children held at Telmond are subjected to “brute physical violence from Israeli guards, denial of family visits and communication with the outside world, a shortage of clothing, appropriate medical attention, hazardous living conditions, and extremely long prison sentences.…LAW’s lawyer said the children report they were suspected of having mobile phones. Israeli guards threatened to beat them with electric and wooden sticks. The children were strip-searched and police dogs were used. The guards threw Qur’ans on the floor, while dogs sniffed their prayer clothes and other religious items.” All of this is part of a larger campaign of violence and repression against Palestinian young people. In “A Generation Denied,” DCI reports Israel’s myriad violations of international conventions concerning the rights of children. Chief among them is denial of the right to education (see IWPS Report #13). Since the start of the Intifada, nearly 200 Palestinian schools have been invaded, shelled or damaged, including the school in Hares, which since last year has bars on the windows because the Israeli army threw tear gas and sound bombs into the school almost every school day in 2001. In numerous villages and cities we have visited, including Qalqilya and Jayyous, the army calls curfew almost every day at 7:00 a.m. and leaves town at 8:30 or 9:00, staying just long enough to make sure that the schools do not open. The final day of last term, the army invaded the school in A-Ras, which children are already being prevented from reaching because of the construction on the apartheid wall, and tore down the Palestinian flag which flies over every school in Palestine. The principal was told that if the flag was replaced, the school would be demolished. Students in D’aba, another village being devastated by the wall construction, have also been threatened with the demolition of their school if a single student is believed to have thrown one stone. Despite the hardships of 55 years of occupation, Palestinians have one of the highest literacy rates in the world, as well as the highest number of Ph.D.’s per capita. Israeli authorities realize that education is a valuable resource in any resistance movement. The strategies to crush Palestinian youth are part of the effort to destroy the Palestinian spirit. They will not succeed. IWPS is continuing to work with Ali’s family and lawyer to secure his release. We will inform our supporters if there is pressure you can bring to see that justice is served. If you are willing to be on our contact list but are not, please contact us. Text: Kate ======================================================================== 3- The story of Mohammad Muhammad Hilfe was released two days ago after he had been held for almost 48 hours. This is what he told us yesterday when we talked to him. When the soldiers came to the Hilfe house they immediatly arrested Muhammad. They put him on the phone with Mossad and they claimed that they had information about him. They asked him questions about his friends and they were particularily interested to know where his mobile phone were (he has not had a mobile phone for two years). They also threatened to demolish the house and to arrest his 15 year old brother. He was soon taken out of the house but the commander did not hand cuff nor blindfold him until he was put into a jeep (probably because of the internationals present). In the jeep one soldier put Muhannads head underneath his leg and the soldiers were calling him names like "Dirty arab" and they also adressed him as Shahid. He was brought to an uncompleted building on Asira street were he was beaten (handcuffed and blindfolded) and finally put in a corner where the rain could reach him. He was then left there until the morning. He was denied to go to the toilet and he was forced to wet his pants. He was very afraid and he was very cold. He could not feel his hands because the cuffs were so tight. The soldiers then dragged him into a hammer jeep and he was taken to Huwarra military base. There he was strip searched,interoggated,tested at a medical clinic twice (blood, hair and temperature) and he was finally allowed to go to the toilet and he was offered lunch. The interoggations lasted for a long time ( he could not keep track of time) and then he was taken to one of the worst interrogation centres in Israel, Betah tekfa. There he was again interrogated and they kept saying that he should tell the truth and that they had information on him. He was know hand cuffed to a chair and terrified. After this final questioning he was taken to a village near Qualqilya, Arson, and released together with some other men. He was very reliefed and happy when we met him and his family yesterday. We all know that the soldiers can come again and that this does not mean that this family and their house is safe but yesterday was a wonderful start of the celebration of Al Ein. We will keep staying with the family in their house. Maria - Tulkarem ==========================================================================
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