Month Report Newsletter
May-2013
On Friday the 3rd of May 2013, dozens of settlers from the settlement of Keryat Arba attacked Beit Omar. They accused the villagers of throwing stones at their cars on the main road that connects Jerusalem and Hebron which passes the entrance to the town of Beit Omar.
On Friday May 10th 2013 clashes broke out in the town of Beit Omar between the IOF and the people of the village. The violence began because the villagers demonstrated their continued solidarity with the prisoners under administrative detention in Israeli jails.
Twenty people were injured in a clashes in the town of Beit Omar between the IOF and the people of Beit Omar, including two head injuries and three other injures moved to the hospital in Hebron, seventeen of them were treated in the field.
At 3:30am, a military force about fourteen … Continue reading
On the 6th of June 2013 a group of Israeli soldiers stormed Beit Ommar in undercover dressed in civilian clothing driving 2 Palestinian cars and arrested Mahmoud Khaled Nayef (age 20). They arrived at the house of Khalid Nayef (age 47) just after 3 in the morning. They destroyed the door and entered the house waking up the entire family. They continued into the house and beat Khalid’s wife and daughters causing large amounts of damage to the house. The commander explained that they had come undercover purposely as to not allow Mahmoud any warning. (the last time they came to arrest him he was able to escape the house in advance)
The Fourth National BDS Conference hosted by the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) took place today at Bethlehem University. The conference lasted from 9am until 5pm and began with recorded messages of Solidarity from Roger Waters and Desmond Tutu. From there, the packed conference room featured interesting and sometimes heated question and answer session with speakers from a wide range of organizations, universities and governmental bodies including the PLO, PACBI, Kairos Palestine, BDS48, Berziet and Al-Najah Universities.
Major topics discussed included how to eradicate and appropriately deal with the problem of normalization both on a popular and administrative level, as well as how to increase the effectiveness of boycotting settlement products both here locally … Continue reading
We recently received plans for the continuation of route 60; it will start from the roundabout of Gush Etzion and continue to Keryat Arba’. The road will be 30m in width and 8 kilometers in length, built mostly on the land of Beit Ommar as well as Halhul & Se’er. Once begun, it will be forbidden for anyone to live, build or farm on any land within 70m on both sides of the road. In total, the development of the road will mean the confiscation of 1600 Donum of land from the people of Beit Ommar. This, along with the other six settlements that already consume 8000 Donum of Beit Ommar land, will effectively cut the town into two parts. … Continue reading
Thursday June 6th 2013:
Early this morning a group of settlers entered Beit Ommar from Bat Aiyn, a settlement that lies to the south of the village, and attacked the land of local farmer Hammad Abdal Hameed Jaber Saleebi age 75. With covered faces they set to work cutting down more than 20 olive trees and flooding his crops with sewage water leaving his land uprooted and unharvestable. This will mark the seventh in a series of reoccurring attacks taking place on the private property of this farmer and his family this year alone. (One of which left Hammad in the hospital in Hebron for five days with a head wound.) After working for 2-3 hours … Continue reading
In the early morning of Wednesday April 17th, soldiers from the Israeli Occupation Forces entered the village of Beit Ommar. At 2.30 a.m., they surrounded the house of Mohammed Ahmad Abu Maria and his family.
The soldiers searched Mohammed’s house for two hours and destroyed many household items belonging to the family. After the search, the soldiers beat Mohammed before they arrested him.
Mohammed is only twenty-two years old, but has already spent three years and two months in Israeli prisons. He was released from prison two months ago and had just recently applied to continue his university studies at Palestine Polytechnic University in Hebron.
