Um Fagara is in area C, under both Israeli military and administrative control. It has been subject to a range of evacuations, abuse and demolitions by the Israeli military in recent years. On 24 November, 2011, the Israeli army demolished two houses, a mosque, a barn and a structure containing the village’s generator. Two Palestinian girls were also arrested. They were released several days later.

Despite the close ‘supervision’ of the Israeli police from a hilltop above, most of the walls of the house were finished. The house was paid for by ACTED (Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development) together with the Humanitarian Relief Fund (HRF), managed by UN OCHA.

Around 6pm, village elders from Um Fagara and members of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee detailed their personal experiences of life in Um Fagara under Israeli occupation. They also thanked the activists for their help.
ACTED (Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development) together with the Humanitarian Relief Fund (HRF), managed by UN OCHA, have also funded the construction of a new mosque in Um Fagara and acquired several mobile caravans for the town. They are all under demolition orders from the Israeli military.

At today’s demonstration, protesters attempted to remove the barbed wire that was on Palestinian land in front of the separation fence. Demonstrators carried posters saying, “no more child arrests” and “free the Palestinian prisoners”. Soldiers arrived after a few minutes with a map showing that the the protesters were in a closed military zone and threatened to arrest all of them if they did not leave. There were about 40 demonstrators present, including a number of women and children. One woman managed to place a Palestinian flag in one of the soldier’s backpack. A police vehicle arrived on the scene, but no arrests were made. They attempted to arrest one international activist and violently shoved him against the fence, but he was able to break free. One Palestinian activist was sent to the hospital at the end of the demonstration after a firework exploded in his hand.

Today’s demonstration was against the illegal settlements and in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners on Prisoners’ Day. About half of the arrests in the West Bank so far this year have been from Beit Ommar. Click here to see video from today’s demonstration in Beit Ommar – 14 April 2012

In Beit Ommar, a peaceful demonstration took place at the entrance of the town, which is located on Route 60. Before reaching the gates of the town, which were closed by the Israeli military to keep people from entering and exiting the town, about a dozen Israeli soldiers attacked the peaceful demonstration with teargas and metal bullets coated in rubber, frequently referred to as rubber bullets. The soldiers threw teargas in every direction, and many people were injured by inhaling the gas. Three activists were injured by rubber bullets.

About 150 activists joined today’s demonstration in Beit Ommar. During the demonstration, Israeli soldiers occupied two Palestinian houses and shot at activists from the rooftops. When soldiers occupy a home, it frightens the family, especially the children, and the soldiers lock the family members in one room while they occupy the house.

Soldiers shot about six teargas cans towards the Center for Freedom and Justice, where PSP activists were watching and filming from the roof, and several activists were injured. After a while, the military jeeps entered further into the town, numbering eight in total, and started shooting more rubber bullets and teargas at demonstrators and people’s homes. Demonstrators threw stones at the jeeps, and eventually forced them to return to the watchtower at the entrance of Beit Ommar. One Israeli soldier was injured during the demonstration. Israeli forces injured roughly 340 Palestinians in the West Bank and killed a 20 year old Palestinian man in Gaza during today’s demonstrations.

The weekly nonviolent protest in Beit Ommar will take place tomorrow, March 31st. It will be used to mark Land Day, and to show solidarity with the prisoners on hunger strikes.

For more information about Yousef and Saqqar’s arrests:

On Saturday, February 11, 2012 the popular committee of Beit Ommar and Palestine Solidarity Project held their weekly demonstration against the occupation and settlements. Residents of Beit Ommar, accompanied by Israeli and international solidarity activists, marched to an area of Beit Ommar’s agricultural land near the illegal Israeli settlement Karmei Tsur. The demonstration, which carried pictures of Palestinian political prisoner Khader Adnan and included owners of land which had recently been confiscated by the settlement, was met with dozens of Israeli soldiers who immediately began to attack the demonstration. Two Palestinians, Saqqar Abu Maria and Beit Ommar popular committee spokesman Yousef Abu Maria were both arrested, along with two Israeli solidarity activists. Saqqar was sprayed with pepper spray as he was being held on the ground by soldiers who fiercely attacked the demonstrators and prevented others from helping the detained individuals. Yousef Abu Maria, who was injured in the face earlier this month at a demonstration, was also thrown to the ground and suffered additional injuries while being arrested. They remain detained while the two Israeli activists were released later Saturday.

Background
Last week, 2 new mobile homes were erected on privately-owned Palestinian land inside the so-called security fence that was built through Palestinian land around Karmei Tsur in 2006. Though an Israeli court case determined that the land between this security fence and the actual settlement would remain in the hands of the Palestinian land owners, in reality the owners have not had access through the fence to their lands since the fence was completed. The theft of this land, in contradiction of even Israeli civilian law, was solidified by the construction of these two new homes on the land. The demonstration on Saturday was against the construction of these homes, as a symptom of the ongoing displacement of Palestinians from their land, as well as in solidarity with political prisoner Khader Adnan.
Adnan, who entered his 56th day of a hunger strike on Saturday, is being held in administrative detention. A friend of PSP co-founder Mousa Abu Maria, Adnan has become a rallying point for Palestinians and solidarity activists who wish to draw attention to the inhumane treatment of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, especially those held in Administrative Detention.

The demonstrators began to remove the fence from the road and by 11am the road was clear for cars to pass. The Israeli military did not intervene during this successful direct action, though a Palestinian man transporting food on his donkey passing near the settlement outpost was beaten by Israeli settlers. International solidarity activists witnessed the event and tried to intervene, but were prevented from doing so by Israeli soldiers.

On Tuesday, January 31st, Yousef’s friends and family were attacked by the Israeli army as they marched towards the military watchtower at the entrance of Beit Ommar. Four people were injured after soldiers unleashed tear gas and sound bombs and began beating the demonstrators. One Palestinian activist had his nose broken and several others were roughly hit with the butts of the soldiers’ guns.

On January 28th, 2011, settlers from Bat Ayn, one of five Israeli settlements built on illegally taken from the Palestinian residents of Beit Ommar, rampaged through the village and shot 17-year-old Yousef while he was on his family’s farmland with his father. To date, no settler has been investigated, let alone arrested and charged, for his murder. The lack of justice in Yousef’s case is part of a wider pattern of impunity under which settlers are allowed to steal from, terrorize, and even kill, Palestinians in the West Bank.

In a hazy room, clouded with cigarette smoke and steam from hot syrup-sweat tea, residents of Kafr ad-Dik and its neighboring villages, along with Palestinian, Israeli, and international activists, excitedly gathered together waiting for the midday prayer to finish. The twenty-seventh of January marked the fourth Friday during which the village of Kafr ad-Dik has staged a nonviolent protest against the annexation of its agricultural land by the Israeli Occupation Authority (IOA).

The village of Kafr ad-Dik, and the greater Salfit District, is located on top of the largest water table in the West Bank, thus providing it with some of the most fertile land in the region. Home to generations upon generations of farmers, Kafr ad-Dik, and the neighboring villages of Rafat, Balut, and Bruqin, have had the majority of their agricultural land stripped away from them in the last ten years by the IOA. In turn unemployment and poverty rates in the farming-based community have skyrocketed.

In a village of which 99% of the inhabitants are olive farmers, the IOA’s annexation of the majority Kafr ad-Dik’s groves has been devastating.

Approximately 4,000 dunams of vital agricultural land, shared by the four villages, has been appropriated by the IOA over the past ten years. Last month, the IOA significantly increased its total of annexed land in the area when it earmarked an additional 1,000 dunums for the alleged expansion of the nearby illegal Israeli outost, Ale Zahav. Kafr ad-Dik residents, however, are convinced this latest annexation of land will be allocated to the construction of an entirely new outpost.

Left with no land to farm, and consequently no source of income, Kafr ad-Dik’s farmers have been forced to either rent out small plots from farmers who still have access to their lands in neighboring villages, or work their own land, now owned by the illegal Israeli settlements, for a paltry wage of around $13 a day.

Popular resistance, in the form of weekly nonviolent marches and demonstrations, has become increasingly commonplace in many West Bank villages since the beginning of the IOA’s construction of the Separation Wall and its subsequent seizure of Palestinian land. Villages such as Bil’in, Ni’lin and, more recently, Nabi Saleh have been the vanguard of the West Banks popular resistance movement over the last few years, with the media giving little to no focus to villages outside the spotlight.

As illegal Israeli settlements continue their unhindered expansion with impunity, robbing Palestinians of their land and livelihood on a daily basis, similar popular resistance demonstrations are popping up in villages all over the West Bank. In order for the new popular resistance efforts to be effective, it is imperative that media sources lend their ears more equitably to the growing number of villages cooperatively combating the occupation.

Nasfar Qufesh, the coordinator for the Popular Committee in the Salfit District, is insistent upon the fact that widespread, disciplined popular nonviolent resistance, represents the strongest means by which West Bank villages can resist the occupation. He says the aim of popular resistance is to, “create awareness in western countries, particularly America, of how, and for what purposes, their hard earned tax money is used.”

The Israeli Occupation Force’s (IOF) blatant use of excessive force during the weekly nonviolent protests throughout the West Bank, via mass amounts of tear gas, rubber bullets, sound grenades, and live ammunition, is an excellent example of American tax dollars hard at work. The US furnishes Israel with over three billion dollars a year in military aid alone, most of which is made up of non-repayable grants.

Although still in its nascent stages, the popular resistance in Kafr ad-Dik is growing. Community leaders predict similar movements to fan out across West Bank villages as a main method of confronting the occupation and its confiscation of their land.

About 50 cars made up a motorcade procession during the action. As soon as the cars arrived at the Israeli checkpoint at the edge of Jericho, Israeli Forces would not let the cars advance. The activists flew Palestinian flags from their cars and asserted their rights to travel anywhere they wished on their own lands in the West Bank. Israeli soldiers detained 5 people during the action, including a 15-year-old girl.

Young Israeli mothers from Tel Aviv and Jaffa and their children joined the Palestinian families for creative workshops and joint games in a public park. The mixed group of almost 80 Israelis and Palestinian women and children enjoyed a delicious picnic meal based on Palestinian cooking. Many Palestinian women activists from Beit Ommar have taken the led in organizing these actions to challenge the occupation.

Asked by a correspondent how they feel about this action and the risks involved, as well as the idea of cooperating with Israelis, one of the Palestinian organizers said: “Our life is hard. We and our children need a break, this is a good opportunity to feel free and happy. Just like the Israeli women, our goal is to make a political statement against the occupation of Palestine. We defy the illegal, inhuman, Israeli system that constantly oppresses us”.

The group issued a statement helping to contextualize the political implications of these actions which read:

“We hereby, publicly reassert, that we do break and shall continue to break the laws and orders that limit the right to freedom of movement of the civilian population in the West Bank. We challenge the wisdom, morality and legality of such decrees. We seek the path of civil disobedience against an arbitrary system that, for the past 44 years, has deprived millions of people of their human and civil rights, placing them under a military regime and behind walls, barriers and checkpoints.”

As the demonstrators walk towards the settlement with their slogans against the occupation, they discovered that garbage from the settlement had been thrown on their land.

Many soldiers stopped the demonstrators before they even could walk up to the settlement fence. “This is a closed military zone, you are not aloud to walk here,” said the soldiers and showed a paper confirming their message.

The illegal settlement of Karmei Tsur was established in 1984 and has confiscated several hundred dumunms of Beit Ommar land. The illegal settlement is expanding with the construction of new buildings and an outpost further down the hill.