As its name suggests, Beit Arabiya is a home belonging to Arabiya Shawamreh, her husband Salim and their seven children, a Palestinian family whose home has been demolished four times by the Israeli authorities and rebuilt each time by ICAHD’s Palestinian, Israeli and international peace activists, before being demolished again last night.

At around 11p.m. Monday, a bulldozer accompanied by a contingent of heavily armed Israeli soldiers appeared on the Anata hills, to promptly demolish Beit Arabiya, along with residential and agricultural structures in the nearby Arab al-Jahalin Bedouin compound. 3 family homes were demolished along with numerous animal pans, and 20 people including young children were displaced, left exposed to the harsh desert environment. While standing in solidarity with Palestinians, ICAHD staff and activists were repeatedly threatened by Israeli soldieries. ICAHD Co-Director Itay Epshtain was beaten and sustained minor injuries.

Beit Arabiya was issued a demolition order by Israeli authorities back in 1994, following their failure to grant a building permit. It has since been demolished four times, to be rebuilt by ICAHD activists. Following a reissue of the demolition order last Thursday, came last night’s fifth demolition. ICAHD Director, Dr. Jeff Halper, standing astride the ruins, vowed to support Salim and Arabiya in rebuilding their home. “We shall rebuild, we must rebuild forthwith, as an act of political defiance of the occupation and protracted oppression of Palestinians” said Halper.

Beit Arabiya has become a symbol of resistance to the Judaization of the Occupied West Bank and Israeli demolition policy. “ICAHD is as determined as always to rebuild the home, and endure in its struggle to bring about justice and peace” added Halper.

Salim and Arabiya, along with their neighbors and friends stood last night and watched as this tragedy unfold once again. Arabiya and Salim have dedicated their home as a center for peace in the memories of Rachel Corrie and Nuha Sweidan, two women (an American and a Palestinian) who died resisting home demolitions in Gaza. In the past decade ICAHD has hosted numerous visitors at Beit Arabiya, and based its annul rebuilding camp at the house, rebuilding 185 demolished Palestinian homes.

UPDATE January 24th: Anata Home Rebuilt by ICAHD Demolished

This morning, Israeli authorities demolished the home of the Abu Omar family, rebuilt by ICAHD in July 2011. The Abu Omar family home, built in 1990 on privately owned land, was demolished by the Israeli military in 2005. Ahmed Abu Omar (46) had applied for a building permit, but was refused on the grounds that his land was zoned as an “agricultural area.” This is a story we hear often, and it reflects Israel’s long-time, unlawful policy of curtailing all construction by Palestinians since 1967. They were offered neither alternative housing nor compensation for the demolition, violating international law. The construction of the Abu Omar family home, long waited since the 2005 demolition by Israel, was completed on July 24th 2011, exactly six months ago. The keys to the home were handed over to the family in a celebratory dedication ceremony marking the end of a two week rebuild. Volunteers were joined by members of the larger Anata community, civil society activists and Palestinian Authority high ranking officials, as family members began life in their rebuilt home. ICAHD staff visited with the family shortly after the demolition of their home took place to find them somber, traumatized, and grief stricken. ICAHD has vowed to support the family in rebuilding their home, once more. This is the second ICAHD rebuilt home demolished within 24 hours, in what seems like a concerted, yet futile, effort to discourage ICAHD from rebuilding demolished Palestinian homes.

(PSP Editorial Note: Palestine Solidarity Project Co-Founder Bekah Wolf has been helping with the training for ICAHD’s rebuilding camp for two summers, including the amazing team who helped build the Abu Omar home in 2011).

For more information and coordination of visits to Beit Arabiya, kindly contact Itay Epshtain at itay@icahd.org or +972-54-2623306

Additional Information

House demolitions and forced evictions are among Israel’s most heinous practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). In 2011, a record year of displacement, a total of 622 Palestinian structures were demolished by Israeli authorities, of which 36% (or 222) were family homes; the remainder were livelihood-related (including water storage and agricultural structures), resulting in 1,094 people displaced, almost double the number for 2010. The Jordan Valley sustained the largest number of demolitions (32% of total structures demolished, 40% of residential structures demolished, 37% of people displaced), with 199 structures demolished and 401 people displaced.
Israel now controls 40% of the West Bank through 149 settlements and 102 outposts, housing more than 500,000 Jewish Israelis, as well as through closed military zones and declared nature reserves. In addition, house demolitions, forced evictions, and land expropriation, exacerbated by settler violence and the economic effects of movement restrictions, have left Palestinian communities struggling to make a living. Palestinians live in constant fear of displacement and dispersion, while Israel secures its domination and control.

The demolition of Palestinian homes is politically motivated and strategically informed. The goal is to confine the 4 million residents of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza to small enclaves, thus effectively foreclosing any viable Palestinian state and ensuring Israeli control, and to allow for the expropriation of land, the ethnic displacement of Palestinians, and the Judaization of the Occupied West Bank.

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.”

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.”

“At 3:30 or 4am I heard some noise outside of my window,” Silwan resident Abdallah Rajmi told me as we stood on a narrow street in the middle of a battle between young Palestinian stone throwers and Israeli occupation forces from the Border Police. “I thought it was a simple drunken fight but then I heard a lot of noise coming from the people involved and my neighbors began waking up.”

Silwan is a neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem, near the walled Old City, and is the target of an ongoing Israeli government plan to demolish dozens of Palestinian homes and replace them with Israeli settlements and a Jewish-themed park.

Rajmi recalled the events as tear gas and rocks were being thrown from both sides onto the alley where we were standing. “At this point I went to my roof to see what was happening and I saw three settler guards with ‘small weapons’ approach a group of young Palestinian men,” referring sarcastically to the guards’ large Uzi assault riles. “The guards began shooting the men and everyone in Silwan woke up.”

At this point, we had to move to the entrance of Rajmi’s house because a storm of rocks started to rain down on us and the Border Police began to use rubber-coated steel bullets.

“I could not believe my eyes. I saw a man lying in his own blood and dying. The settler guards had just shot him in cold blood and watched him dying. He was there, on the ground, for one hour until an Israeli ambulance arrived on the scene, of course they would not allow any of us to get near him. The Israelis did, however, bring over forty settler guards and Border Police to the scene before the he was moved.”

The dead man was named as Samir Sarhan, aged about 30 according to news reports, and the father of five children.

Rajmi spoke clearly while looking me straight in the eye but once could see the rage simmering over the killing. “This is not a good situation. This is an extremely hard situation and I think that chaos is going to break out here,” he said. “If another one dies from his wounds sustained last night, I think that Silwan is going to blow up. You just wait and see what happens during the funeral march.” The procession was to end at a cemetery near the al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

Indeed, Rajmi was correct about the unrest in Silwan boiling over. I had been in the neighborhood since 8am, right when the protests of stone throwing at Israeli Border Police started. Silwan sits in a deep valley and the area has many small winding alleys. Thus pockets of resistance were surfacing all over the place as groups of young Palestinians would sneak up on Israeli forces and rain stones upon them with calls of “leave this place” and “this is not your place, leave now!” Border Police reacted with waves of tear gas which would cover the village including the houses where women and children were hiding from the street fighting. At points, the Israeli forces would use rubber-coated steel bullets from very close range, which has often resulted in permanent or lethal injuries. Tires were set on fire and trash cans overturned. It was hard not to think of images of the second Palestinian intifada as I was trying to get photographs.

This situation continued for five hours throughout Silwan. Pockets of stone-throwing here and there while tear gas covered the whole village as a form of collective punishment. Eventually, the funeral march began with calls of “God is great!” and every resident of Silwan came to the street to join the procession. As the funeral march wound its way through the narrow streets, people began attacking every settler house, car or bit of infrastructure in its path. Eventually, at the entrance of Silwan right next to the entrance to the al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which Jews refer to as the Temple Mount, and the “City of David” settler complex, the crowd exploded with rage and full-scale destruction began. Windows were smashed in the front of the City of David building and Israeli Border Police cars were flipped over and set on fire.

As the group moved closer to the al-Aqsa compound, a number of public buses from the Israeli company Egged were on the road. Angry Silwan residents expressed their frustration and began to destroy every window and surface of the buses possible. At one point, people entered the buses in order to rip out their seats. This happened while the bus driver was still inside. The procession reached the al-Aqsa compound and the tension died down but news agencies are now reporting that stone throwing from the al-Aqsa compound plateau began when the funeral was over and Israeli troops had entered the al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam.

Rajmi told me that the violence is only going to grow because of this murder. I have received word from him that one of the wounded victims from the shooting had just succumbed to his wounds. His name was not immediately available.

Surely this death could be a spark for further violence, which the people of Silwan seem to be prepared for. Unlike the “Fayyadism” — official Palestinian Authority cooperation with the Israeli occupation –that is taking over Ramallah, the people of Silwan are ready to resist and fight regardless of the price in occupied East Jerusalem.

Photo by Joseph Dana

Hebron Merchant Reads Certificate of Appreciation

Protesters also gathered in Sheik Jarrah today for the weekly demonstration against the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem. Approximately 200 activists gathered near the former homes of the al-Kurd, al-Ghawi and Hanoun families, all of whom were evicted by the Israeli government to make way for illegal Israeli settlers in 2008-2009. The police had closed the sidewalk near the Hanoun house, where demonstrators had gathered for much of last weeks demonstration, so the crowd gathered in a small park down the block, holding signs, beating drums and chanting against the settlers and evictions. At one point the crowd marched down the block to the home of the Sa’aw family, one of two new families to receive eviction orders this year. All five families are part of a group of twenty-eight houses facing eviction in Sheik Jarrah. The families are refugees from the 1948 war, and were given their homes in 1956 by the Jordanian government in collaboration with the United Nations Relief and Works Committee. The families have been fighting a 38 year legal battle to defend their homes, and though they have proven legal ownership of their houses the court has ruled in favor of the settlers.

This week, while the festive march of hundreds gathered at the entrance to Sheikh Jarrah, where they were met by dozens of police and military border police, a smaller group of the Palestinian home owners and a group of international solidarity activists protested outside the homes, within the area blocked off to the main demonstration by the police. Throughout the demonstration, settlers were free to cross the line of police, while Jewish demonstrators were arrested for stepping off the sidewalk.

In front of the evicted houses, just over a dozen settlers attempted a counter-demonstration, leading to heated confrontations that the police refused to separate, but were quickly out-numbered and out-shouted by the evicted families and their supporters, and dispersed on their own. Afterward, 5 Palestine solidarity activists were arrested.

In Nabi Saleh, the demonstration against the attempted expansion of the Halamish settlement was attended by over 100 men, women and children, as well as international and Israeli activists. A week after Ehab Barghouthi, 14, was put into a coma after he was shot in the forehead from close range with a rubber-coated steel bullet, the demonstration was as determined as ever to reach the land, which contains a spring essential to the agricultural livelihood of the village. They were again met with a barrage of tear gas, rubber-coated steel bullets, and the “skunk”, a chemical spray with an overwhelming nasty smell.

In Ni’lin, Al-Ma’asara and Bil’in, the demonstrations against the construction of the Annexation Barrier on their agricultural land continued, with large contingents of Israeli and international solidarity activists. In Ni’lin, over 100 demonstrators marched towards the Barrier, which is a combination of fence and concrete wall unique to Ni’lin of all rural areas, where they were met by Israeli forces who used tear gas, and a horrible-smelling spray called “the skunk” to disperse the group.

In Jerusalem on Friday, approximately 3,000 Jews and Palestinians gathered in a soccer field near the entrance to the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah after the Israeli High Court heard a petition from the protesters who were demanding the right to gather on the street where right-wing Jewish settlers have moved into homes from which Palestinian owners have been forcefully evicted in the last year. The compromise solution from the court was to allow a smaller procession of no more than 300 demonstrators to march from the field to the entrance of Sheikh Jarrah a few hundred meters away.

Regular demonstrations were also held in Ni’lin, Bil’in and Al-Ma’asara, both against the construction of the Annexation Barrier on their agricultural land.

In Al-Ma’asara, approximately 30 Palestinians were accompanied by 10 international and Israeli solidarity activists as they marched down the main past Al-Ma’asara village, connecting villages east of Betlehem with the main throughway, Route 60. They were quickly stopped by Israeli soldiers at the edge of Al-Ma’asara, where they declared the area a closed military zone. The demonstrators insisted they were trying to reach the site of the Annexation Barrier, which was partially constructed on Palestinian land in 2007-2008 but has not been completed or worked on for over a year.

Al-Ma'asara 02_12_10

Nabi Saleh 02.12.10

In Ni’lin, demonstrators, with the usual foreign contingent, marched after the noon call to prayer to the site of the Annexation Barrier, which has been completed in several areas surrounding the village and cutting off access to large amounts of agricultural land. 2 people, Palestinian resident of Ni’lin Arafat Amira and Israeli anarchist Yonatan Pollak were arrested during the demonstration.

In Sheikh Jarrah, a neighborhood in Palestinian Jerusalem that has been the site of several evictions to allow for Jewish settlers to takeover homes belonging to Palestinians for over half a century, a lively group of Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Jerusalemites gathered at the entrance to the neighborhood, near the homes of Ghawi and Hanoun families, both of whom were kicked out of their homes in August, 2009 and have been living in protest tents on the street since then. Israeli police prevented the group from entering the street, which is still largely Palestinian with 3 homes occupied by Jewish Israeli settlers, but did not resort to the mass-arrests and violence they had used in previous weeks against the peaceful demonstrations.

All of these demonstrations were overshadowed in media coverage and attention by a group of people in Bil’in who painted themselves blue, dressing up as characters from Hollywood’s $300 million film Avatar for their weekly march to the Annexation Barrier built on their agricultural land. This comes as the Israeli military begins to finally comply with an Israeli court order to re-route the fence in the Bil’in area, which will return access to some of the village’s land to the residents, which has been cut off since the completion of the fence in this area over 2 years ago.

This Friday, January 22, demonstrations were again held against land confiscation, the Annexation Barrier, and the expulsion of Palestinians from East Jerusalem for the settlement of right-wing Jewish settlers.

In Al-Ma’asara, Bethlehem District, approximately 70 Palestinians, Internationals and Israelis marched from the center of town towards the barrier set up by the Israeli military. Tensions were high as a larger-than-usual presence of Israeli soldiers and border police lined the route of the march on the roofs of buildings. The demonstration included the imposed Palestinian government’s minister of agriculture who participated in a symbolic tree-planting near the entrance of the village. Speeches were made in Arabic and Hebrew and the demonstration left peacefully. Not satisfied with the lack of confrontation, the Israeli soldiers followed demonstrators into the village. One man was followed into a shop where he was arrested by the soldiers as he bought chicken. He was released later in the evening.

In Nabi Saleh, Ramallah District, Israeli soldiers invaded the village before the demonstration officially began, arresting 6 Palestinian residents, 3 men and 3 women. The demonstration was held as planned, protesting the recent attempted confiscation of agricultural land by the nearby Halamish settlement.

In Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem, a group of 350 Israelis and Palestinians gathered in a park near the street where several houses have been taken over by a right-wing Jewish settler organization beginning last summer. For the past several weeks, dozens of Jewish Israeli activists have been arrested during the demonstrations, which were beginning with a permitted march from the center of West Jerusalem to the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. This week, the Israeli police refused to issue a permit for the march so organizers decided to begin closer to the occupied street, which, as usual, was cut off by Israeli police. During the demonstration, as participants marched towards the occupied street, Israeli police began arresting participants. 22 people were arrested in all. During the protest, the Israeli police were allowing settlers to gather inside their barricades on the occupied street, where they began attacking Palestinian residents. 2 Palestinians were reportedly hospitalized after assaults by Jewish Israeli settlers. Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah who participated in the demonstration were also arrested after they arrived at their homes. Recent updates from Israeli organizers suggest that at least some of the 22 demonstrators are being charged, and that the Israeli prosecution has requested that 6 be held for the duration of the legal proceedings, a process that is often used against Palestinians during legal procedures but is exceedingly rare against Jewish Israelis.

Israeli Soldiers Stop Demonstrators in Al-Ma'asara

The demonstration continued as planned on Friday, though it was smaller than usual. The group marched towards the entrance of the village, where the Israeli military had, as usual, blocked the road and had additionally set up soldiers on the roofs of nearby buildings, surrounding the demonstration and creating a heightened sense of tension. With all of that, the demonstration continued as usual and ended peacefully.

In Ni’lin, 4 more people, including two members of the organizing committee were arrested over night. A hearing for the 2 members arrested last week will be held later this week. They are reportedly being charged with “incitement”, a charge with potentially heavy consequences being used against many leaders of demonstrations against the Wall.

In Bil’in, live ammunition was reportedly used to disperse the demonstrations. Though most of the activists arrested in Bil’in have been released, 2 still remain in jail, facing trial.