NOVANEWS
Dear Friends,
As you can imagine, these are uneasy times. On the one hand, the possibility of strikes against Iran are again on our news, preparing us for the fate that our government or PM or his buddies have cut out for us; on the other hand our neighbors in Egypt and perhaps elsewhere are burning the Israeli flag in public. Hard to know what the next days will bring, much less the next months, except that Sunday is the day that Palestinians commemorate the Nakba, we can expect more injuries by Israel’s ‘security forces’—hopefully not deaths.
Given the period, I have decided to focus today’s message on human rights issues in the oPt and on what is actually taking place in the oPt. There are 4 items, but all are compilations apart from the first one, which reports news that I did not hear on our radio news, nor on the TV news of channel 1. What I heard was that a soldier was lightly injured, that the Palestinians in East Jerusalem were rowdy (nothing about soldiers being rowdy, though one report did say that crowd-dispersal methods were being applied to ‘rowdy’ demonstrations). The remaining 3 items all report on what is happening in the oPt—the 2nd item being the OCHA weekly report, the 3rd item being the PCHR weekly report on human rights in the Territories, and the last one being ‘Today in Palestine,’ which when I checked it had not yet posted today’s news, but perhaps by the time you read it it will have.
Let’s hope that we get through the next 3 days with no deaths or injuries either of Palestinians or of Israelis.
All the best,
Dorothy
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1.Press Release
Friday, 13 May 2011
Teen Critically Injured as Israel Cracks Down on Nakba Demos
17 year-old was critically injured from live fire in East Jerusalem. An American protester suffered serious head injury after being hit by a tear-gas projectile shot directly at him from close range.
Israeli military and police forces responded heavy handedly to demonstrations commemorating 63 years to the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948 today all over the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Morad Ayyash, a 17 year old from the Ras el-Amud neighborhood was shot in the stomach with live ammunition. He has reached the Muqassed hospital with no pulse and the doctors are now fighting for his life.
Tension also rose in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, where 19 protesters have been injured and 11 were arrested. During the evening hours, large police forces raided houses in Silwan and carried out additional arrests.
In the village of Ma’asara, south of Bethlehem, two protesters were arrested during a peaceful demonstration that was attacked with tear-gas for no apparent reason. One of those arrested is a member of the village’s popular committee. In Nabi Saleh – a regular target for military aggression recently – soldiers and Border Police officers injured no less than 25 protesters, including a Palestinian women in her 50s who was beaten up so badly that her wounds required her removal from the Salfeet Hospital to the bigger and more advanced Rafidiya Hospital in Nablus. A 25 year-old American demonstrator suffered a serious head injury and an Israeli activist was diagnosed with two open fractures in his hand. Both were injured by tear-gas projectiles shot directly at them from short range, in violation of the Israeli Army’s open fire regulations. Four protesters were arrested in Nabi Saleh, including two Palestinian women.
For more details: Jonathan Pollak +972-54-632-7736
Violence in Nabi Saleh started today after Israeli Border Police officers took over the village’s main junction and tried to disperse the demonstration while it was still well inside the village, The officers began charging the peaceful protesters with batons, shooting large amounts of tear-gas – partly shot directly at the demonstrators – and carrying out arrests.
The Israeli military and police’s violent and hysteric reaction to the Nakba day demonstrations today is an example to the fact that Israel cannot conceive handling Palestinian civil resistance to the Occupation in any means but military means. As September looms, it seems as if Israel chooses to tread not the path of democracy, but rather that of neighboring regimes like Egypt and Syria, and shoot at unarmed demonstrators.
Popular Struggle Coordination Committee | 12 Raffaele Ciriello St | Ramallah | OPT
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2.
http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_protection_of_civilians_weekly_report_2011_05_12_english.pdf |
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3. [PCHR_e] Weekly Report On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (05– 11 May 2011)
PCHR
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Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Continue Systematic Attacks against Palestinian Civilians and Property in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT)
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· An activist of the Izziddin al-Qassam Brigades died of Wounds that he had sustained earlier in the Gaza Strip.
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· IOF continued to fire at Palestinian civilians in border areas in the Gaza Strip
–IOF opened fire at a peaceful demonstration in the northern Gaza Strip, but no casualties were reported.
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· IOF continued to target Palestinian fishermen in Gaza sea.
–IOF fired at Palestinian fishing boats, but no casualties were reported.
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· IOF continued to use force against peaceful protests in the West Bank.
– Three demonstrators, including a child, a woman and an international human rights defender, were wounded in Nabi Saleh and Bil’ein peaceful protests in Ramallah.
– IOF arrested a child in Bil’ein’s weekly protest.
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· IOF conducted 45 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank.
– IOF arrested 18 Palestinian civilians, including 5 children.
– The arrested Palestinians include four leaders of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad in Jenin.
– IOF destroyed the furniture and the windows in 2 houses in Azzoun village, east of Qalqilya.
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· IOF continued settlement activities and Israeli settlers continued their attacks in the West Bank.
– IOF bulldozed four brick and tin houses and 12 tents in Kherbet Um Nir, south of Hebron.
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· Israel has continued to impose a total siege on the Gaza Strip and tightened the siege on the West Bank.
