Settler buses run by the companies Egged and Veolia, connect Israeli settlements which are built on stolen Palestinian land in the West Bank, and deemed illegal under International Law, with cities within Israel proper. Palestinians are not allowed to ride these buses, one of many separate and unequal and policies which constitutes apartheid. The Palestinian Freedom Riders waited at a settlement bus stop in the Ramallah district in the late afternoon of November 15th, surrounded by international media and supporters. Several settlement bus drivers saw the crowd gathered at the bus stop and did not stop their buses to let the passengers board.

Finally, a settlement bus stopped at the six activists boarded wearing keffiyehs and carrying signs that said things like, “we shall overcome.” After a fifteen minute ride as the bus approached Hizma checkpoint, Israeli Forces boarded the bus and demanded to see the IDs of the six passengers. On seeing that they were Palestinian, they ordered the activists off the bus and threatened them with arrest. The activists refused to leave, and were roughly dragged off the bus one by one and placed under arrest.

Unarmed campaigns such as the Freedom Rides are only expected to grow across Palestine as Israeli apartheid policies continue to be challenged.

More than 800 dumums of Beit Ommar and Shwoukh land will be taken by the Israelies for a 8km bypass road, starting from Gush Etzion. The settlers have already built a watch tower on a hill top in the area – the first step to establish a new settlement. The road to the planned settlement on Halhoul land will go through Beit Ommar and Shwoukh land and join in on the route 60 by Halhoul.

Many farmers will lose the land where they grow their crops. A lot of wine yards will be cut down, and houses might be demonlished.

Residents of Beit Ommar have already demonstrated against the new bypass road. Report here

According to the notices received by villagers, the area is close to the train line to Jerusalem and next to the East Jerusalem settlement of Gilo, in which Israeli authorities approved the building of 1,100 new homes on Tuesday, sparking international condemnation.

The notification of the Israeli Ministry of Finance’s intention to purchase the lands said the acquisition was for military and security purposes.

Battir resident Nidal al-Zaghir said: the land confiscation “will be a great loss for the village, as they will lose many of their houses, water wells and agricultural lands.”

That could mean challenging Israel using boycotts, demonstrations and international diplomatic forums more aggressively—ideas that are gaining currency among young Palestinians. In a year when peaceful demonstrations have radically altered the political landscape of the Arab world, they increasingly embrace notions of nonviolent resistance.

Still, many observers say that tensions are building in the Palestinian areas—especially in the West Bank, where Jewish settlements continue to grow and chafe against Palestinian communities. Even peaceful confrontations, they worry, could escalate and set off another round of violence.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, has stressed that the U.N. bid won’t substitute for negotiations or replace the existing framework for working toward a two-state solution laid out in the Oslo agreement that has guided Israeli-Palestinian relations for two decades. But many Palestinians, especially youths who make up the majority of the population, see the U.N. bid as something else: a sharp break with a peace process and the beginning of a new era.
They want their leadership to actively challenge Israel for sovereignty over the West Bank, though not necessarily through an armed struggle. “We’re hoping to have a state. Checkpoints should be dismantled. Palestinians will patrol where Israelis do now,” said Ahmed Aqtish, a 24-year-old mechanic.
Those sorts of soaring expectations almost certainly won’t be met in the coming months, though, and could cause problems for Mr. Abbas and the Palestinian leadership now that they have returned home from New York. Young Palestinians, long the foot soldiers of the Palestinian cause, have become disenchanted with their aging leadership.
That has grown as the protests across the Arab world have played out. Mr. Abbas’s Fatah movement, as well as the militant group Hamas that controls the Gaza Strip, are both losing support, according to Khalil Shikaki, head of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. Quarterly polling that the center has conducted since March shows that young adults are “essentially abandoning Fatah and Hamas,” he said.
Young people have gotten behind Mr. Abbas’s statehood push, elevating his popularity for now. Mr. Abbas returned to cheering crowds in the West Bank on Sunday, and the Palestinian Authority called a public holiday and released children from schools to welcome him back.
Mr. Abbas and the Palestinian leadership began planning for, and talking up, the statehood bid months ago. On Friday he formally submitted a request for the U.N.’s security council to take up the issue. It could take weeks to come up for a vote at the council, where it has almost no chance of success. That’s because the U.S. has promised to veto the measure, saying the Palestinians should negotiate directly with Israel and not involve the U.N.
Mr. Abbas also could choose to ask the U.N.’s General Assembly to elevate the status of the Palestinians to that of an observers state, recognition that has a much better chance of being granted but that would have almost no immediate impact on the lives of Palestinians.
Mr. Abbas sees the bid as a way to pressure the Israelis in negotiations within the Oslo framework, a process that the current leadership started and has a huge stake in continuing. But for much of the younger generation, it has come to represent a defining moment, marking a sort of logical conclusion of the Oslo process. “They want him to put an end to Oslo,” said Mr. Shikaki. “The last thing Abbas wants to do is throw out Oslo.”
Yet even Mr. Abbas’s supporters say the U.N. move is born of a sense that time and support could be running out for the two-decade-old framework for negotiations and the Palestinian Authority that was created as part of that framework. “Our international situation is not sustainable,” said Ghassan Katib, a spokesman for the authority. “We’ve staked our reputations on a peace process that is going nowhere.”
Mr. Abbas may come under pressure to try a new direction that young Palestinians increasingly favor, nonviolent resistance, and advocate the sort of boycotts that were aimed at South Africa’s former apartheid government. Mr. Abbas mentioned nonviolent resistance in his speech to the U.N. on Friday.
Palestinian activists such as Mustafa Barghouti, a politician, have been working for years to rally support for a sustained campaign of nonviolent resistance. He believes support for nonviolence has also been bolstered by efforts to break the blockade that Israel has imposed on Gaza and a series of rallies in one Palestinian area that persuaded Israel to change the course of a security wall it constructed.
“We must make the cost of the occupation higher than the benefits,” for the Israelis, he said. Increasingly, Mr. Shikaki’s polling shows that young Palestinians are more impressed with what the Tahrir Square protests accomplished in Egypt and less enamored of the sort of violent struggle the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has championed. “Tahrir seems to be winning out, and Hezbollah is out of favor,” said Mr. Shikaki.
Still, Mr. Shikaki worries that without meaningful negotiations, a sustained campaign of nonviolent confrontation could easily slip into another spasm of violence, given the underlying tensions in the West Bank. That could happen because of violence by Israeli or Palestinian extremists, undisciplined protesters or a miscalculation by Israeli soldiers confronting the sort of nonviolent tactics they aren’t used to handling.

by Bill Spindle

Last night, PSP joined thousands of Palestinians on the streets of Hebron to watch Mahmoud Abbas’ speech at the UN general assembly. Large crowds congregated along al-Quds street, where several big screens had been erected.

There was an expectant and celebratory atmosphere as the crowd watched musical and cultural performances that were being staged in Beirut and Nablus in the build up to the speech, which began at approximately 7pm local time.

The crowd applauded, cheered, and chanted as the speech was given a standing ovation in the UN general assembly, and a great cheer erupted at Abbas’ ringing words; “Enough! Enough! Enough!”

Celebrations continued after the speech had ended, until the crowd dispersed around an hour later.

Saturday 24 September 2011: Late on Friday night the Israeli army once again entered Beit Ommar. Two military jeeps positioned themselves inside the town – one near the route 60 highway, and another across the entrance to the town.

From these positions, Israeli soldiers sporadically fired tear gas into residential areas of the town, with several cannisters landing in gardens and next to homes.

These attacks came without any provocation, or any response from Beit Ommar residents. In addition to the tear gas fired into empty gardens, soldiers also fired several rounds along an entirely deserted main street.

In addition to the tear gas, the army also began stopping and searching cars entering and leaving the village, and questioning their drivers and passengers.

Such violence and harassment from the Israeli military is a common occurence in Beit Ommar, where night-time raids and arbitrary arrests happen on a regular basis.

21st September: For the past two days, Israeli military forces have repeatedly entered the town of Beit Ommar, advancing along the main street and firing teargas and concussion grenades. Groups of soldiers ranging in number from six to twenty-five occupied the road close to the entrance to the town for hours at a time, occasionally closing the army-installed steel gate, which closes the town to Palestinians.

Last (Tuesday) night the military also fired flares over the village and the neighbouring Al Arub refugee camp. A group of soldiers then entered the village, although no arrests were made.

This escalation in Israeli army harassment comes during the run-up to Mahmoud Abbas’ speech at the UN, and Palestine’s subsequent bid for statehood. Huge demonstrations have been planned across the West Bank on Wednesday and Friday.

This morning at around 7.30 am, Beit Ommar farmers Ali Thalji, aged 70, and his son Ahmed, 40, were harassed by a group of Israeli soldiers as they tended to their sheep on fields in Safa, Beit Ommar.

The group of soldiers approached from the direction of the illegal settlement of Bat Ayn, telling Ali and Ahmed that the land they were on – their own fields – had been appropriated by the Israeli State, and repeatedly told them to leave the area.

After approximately half an hour, the soldiers left without any major incidents, but it is a development of great concern to the residents of Safa, a suburb on the edge of Beit Ommar. This is because it implies that the settlement of Bat Ayn has designs on this area and may soon attempt to steal the farmer’s fields.

Beit Ommar residents and farmers face continual harassment from Bet Ayn settlers. Raw sewage is regularly piped down into the valley, rendering the land unusable during harvest time, approximately 30 000 olive trees have been burned by settlers in this area, and it is common practice for settlers to shoot farmers’ sheep if they come with range.

This January, local youth Youssef Ikhlayl, aged 17, was murdered by settlers from Bat Ayn as he picked olives in fields near Saffa. He was shot in the head, and never regained consciousness, while a 15-year-old who was also present survived despite being shot in the arm. For more information on Yousef’s murder, see here.

Bat Ayn is one of only two illegal settlements in the entire West Bank that is not surrounded by a fence and barbed wire. This is at the settlers own request, to allow them to maraud into Beit Ommar lands at will.

The Israeli army bulldozed the house at 4am

Tuesday 13th September – In the early hours of Tuesday morning, Israeli army bulldozers demolished two buildings, one home in Beit Ommar, and one car parts shop in the neighbouring Al Rub refugee camp.

Fayiz at the site of his demolished home.

In Beit Ommar, a army bulldozer demolished a house which was under construction near the Route 60 highway, which runs past the entrance to the town. The building’s owner, Fayiz Nasr Khalyir, 47, had planned to house his family, including six children, in the new home. Fayiz had already spent 30,000 NIS on building the home.

According to local sources, Israeli forces also issued another demolition order in East Beit Ommar.

Palestinians survey the damage, with the Beit Ommar watchtower and Rout 60 in background

In total, the settlers severed two dunums (two thousand square meters) of Mahmoud’s grape vines in fields near the illegal Karmei Tsur settlement.

Israeli authorities and the Israeli civilian police – upon seeing a number of Palestinians, press, and international activists – soon arrived on the scene accompanied by roughly twenty-five soldiers.

The shock of seeing so much of his work and livelihood destroyed overwhelmed Mahmoud, and he began to struggle for breath and feel chest pains. A Red Crescent Society ambulance arrived and tended to Mahmoud. Meanwhile, the police and soldiers ‘gathered evidence.’

When Mahmoud is ready, he and the other farmers will be taken to the Israeli police station for questioning. The area of Mahmoud’s fields is covered by 24-hour CCTV surveillance from the Karmei Tsur settlement, which will have undoubtedly captured the crimes committed last night.

Such devastating damage to the livelihoods of Beit Ommar farmers is a common occurrence, as Israeli settlers from the five surrounding illegal settlements routinely attack and harass Beit Ommar farmers, and destroy their crops, often wiping out the whole season’s income for a family in one attack.