While protests erupt across the Middle East and North Africa (see the latest Tahrir Mothership and Liveblog for full details as well as weasel’s country by country roundup) protesters are meeting with various levels of success. Crucial to the success of the protests is the appetite for regimes and military and security authorities to inflict violence on their own people. In Tunisia and Egypt, where those authorities did not have the appetite for violence, concessions were made and it appears the momentum for change is unstoppable. In Iran, Bahrain, Yemen, and Algeria, the authorities are more willing to use violence against their people in a marked display of autocratic deafness.
Palestinians face many of the same problems as other in the region. They are subject to a regime that is deaf to their demands and is willing to use violence. Within the Green Line, Palestinians are discriminated against in a range of ways from lower funding by government for education and a range of services including housing, marriage and immigration. In the occupied territories (OPT), they are occupied militarily or under siege, subject to arbitrary arrest and detention due to the criminalisation of political action and speech, constrained by checkpoints and Jewish-only roads and settlements, subject to land expropriation and home demolition and all the problems associated with being Palestinian and living under a regime prepared to use violence against them to quell their aspirations.
While our eyes are turned elsewhere in the region, it was business as usual for the Israeli state and its continued violence against Palestinian resistance.
Detention of Children/Land Expropriation:
In Nabih Saleh, Israel continues to repress non-violent dissent against the Separation Wall that denies residents access to their land with 3am child arrests (see the link for video):
Israel is devoting maximum effort to the repression of Nabi Saleh’s determination to demonstrate against the Occupation. The specific method of repression has been in development for the past eight years and is not only designed to break the demonstrations but to leave permanent psychological scars on the next generation of Nabi Saleh villagers. In short, children are used to implicate the leaders of the Popular Committee for incitement in demonstrations, providing evidence for their long term incarceration. In the last month, six children have been arrested or detained in Nabi Saleh by the army.
The village has been declared a ‘closed military zone’. Peaceful protesters are fired on with tear gas and rubber bullets.
In Bil’in, another site of resistance against the Separation Wall that is robbing Palestinians of their land in the West Bank, 2 children aged 14 years old were detained after 3 children were detained the previous week. The pretext in both cases was that they were “too close to the wall”.
Settler Violence/Harassment:
In Beit Ommar, armed Israeli settlers attempted to enter the village to harass residents:
Dozens of villagers, including activists with the Palestine Solidarity Project and the National Committee, also came to the area to defend their village. After a stand-off that lasted more than one hour, the Israeli Military ordered the settlers to leave the village.
In a earlier incident on January 28th, 17-year-old Yousef Ikhlyal was shot in the head by armed settlers who invaded his family’s land. Yousef died of his wounds the following day in a Hebron hospital. His killers have still not been brought to justice. On January 27th, Odai Qadous was shot dead by a settler from Brakha settlement and died. According to Stop the Wall:
The killing of Odai in Iraq Burin and Yousef in Beit Ummar are the latest example of ongoing, systematic and unpunished settler violence. It is important to situate these two killings within wider trends of settler attacks, which are frequent in villages located near settlements, in particular in the Hebron and Nablus districts.
Iraq Burin and the surrounding villages have faced years of settler violence, ranging from physical attacks and shootings to the damage of property and intimidation. Such attacks increase during the olive harvest season, with a majority of last year’s attacks occurring in this area.
The killing in Beit Ummar comes as Occupation soldiers are also arresting dozens of village youth, attempting to break the weekly demonstration. In three consecutive days, soldiers arrested nine, the vast majority minors, in night raids against the village.
Unfortunately, this is just a snapshot of the range of activities directed against Palestinian dissent and peaceful political action to prevent the further loss of land. However, the Israeli state is determined to keep taking and settling Palestinian land and entrenching the alienation and dispossession of Palestinians in the lands west of the Jordan and maintaining Jewish privilege to those lands. As a result, Palestinians have turned to the international community to gain support. In recent months, there has been a growth of support for recognition of Palestine along the 1967 borders, bringing to over 100 the number of countries that recognize Palestine. In conjunction with that, Palestinians are seeking further affirmation from the UN Security Council that the settlement activity in the OPT is inconsistent with international law in an effort to place further pressure on Israel to obey international law. It appears as though the US will provide a veto for Israel despite a finding by the International Court of Justice that the settlements are illegal and the official position of the United States that the settlements are illegal. President Obama is happy to condemn the actions of the Iranian regime against the protesters (and note Iranian hypocrisy as that regime cheers the Egyptians but brutally suppresses its own protesters). However, we hear little condemnation of the brutality of Israelis against Palestinians who have the same aspirations as Iranians, Egyptians, Tunisians, Americans – a government that is legitimized by the governed.
About the series: Adalah ("justice" in Arabic) is a diary series about the Middle East, with special (but not exclusive) emphasis on the Arab-Israeli conflict. The authors of this series believe in the right of self-determination for all the people of the Middle East and that a just resolution respecting the rights and dignity of both Palestinians and Israelis is the only viable option for peace. Our diaries will consist of news roundup and analysis. We invite you to discuss them in the comments or contribute with stories from the region which deserve attention. We ask only that you be respectful and that the number of meta comments be kept to a minimum.