Just before 1am Friday morning 8 Israeli military Armoured Personnel Carriers entered Beit Ommar and began a series of raids into Palestinian homes. An international eyewitness of the first arrest of Yousef Sabarneh reports:

“At 00:50am a convoy of 8 Israeli Armoured Personnel Carriers and jeeps screeched to a halt outside the home of the Sabarneh family in Beit Ommar. Armed soldiers surrounded the house and spotlights from the military vehicles lit up the 3 story house. The family were given 2 minutes to leave the building by an Israeli soldiers shouting in Arabic over a loudspeaker. After the warning expired stun grenades were thrown through the closed windows of the first floor where the family had gathered. Shortly afterwards … Continue reading

Overnight Wednesday, April 21, thousands of gallons of sewage have been deliberately pumped onto 75 dunums (25 acres) of vineyards by settlers from Gush Etzion. The farmers in Beit Ommar have just started picking vine leaves which, with the harvest of grapes, constitutes their total livelihood. The fetid water was pumped from a 100mm pipe which protrudes several metres through the boundary fence of Gush Etzion settlement; whoever opened the valve did so in full knowledge that it would flood dozens of fields contaminating the fruit and destroying the harvest.

This eco-terrorism has regularly been used against the farmers in the village. PSP has provided copies of the photographic evidence … Continue reading

Sa’ed Ahmed Abu Maria is just 6 years old and is a normal Beit Ommar kid who loves riding on his dads tractor. He was shot in the leg with a plastic coated steel bullet Wednesday afternoon by an Israeli settlement security guard who took offense at his father plowing the land his family have farmed for generations next to the Karmei Tsur settlement. Sa’ed is the son of Ahmed Abu Maria, a member of the Beit Ommar National Committee.

No reason can be found that might have provoked the settler into shooting young Sa’ed.

No warning was given that the guard was about to open fire. The wound … Continue reading

Friday morning, April 16, Beit Ommar woke up to huge blocks of concrete across the entrance to the town and a locked steel barrier which cut off all vehicular access. Other back roads were similarly blocked and pedestrians were questioned by Israeli soldiers checking all IDs.

Around 11 am four jeeps started towards the main street to provoke the youth of the town who replied in the traditional manner by throwing small stones at the vehicles. The Israeli troops set up snipers on a rooftop and other soldiers fired rubber coated bullets at the group of youths. A pair of soldiers grabbed a passing kid of 12 or 13 by the scruff of his neck and forced him to walk … Continue reading

Wednesday, April 14, the student committee of the Palestine Solidarity Project held a 2 hour demonstration at the fence of Karmei Tsur settlement before being dispersed by Israeli soldiers and settler security using live ammunition.

At 3 o’clock a group of 25 young men and women from Beit Ommar approached the razor wire fence of the nearest Israeli settlement to the town carrying hand-written placards and chanting slogans calling for the end to the illegal settlements. The students posed no threat to the 4 jeeps full of heavily armed soldiers and 2 trucks of armed settler security who arrived on the scene however the peaceful demonstration against land theft was broken up initially by tear gas grenades. The retreating students were … Continue reading

11 Arrested, Including 2 Palestinians from PSP, in Saffa Protest Against Settlement Expansion

Saturday afternoon a group of around 50 farmers and residents of Saffa attempted to remove a stone and concrete structure erected on their land by settlers from Bat Ayn. The farmers were accompanied by members of PSP, the National Committee of Beit Ommar, Israeli activists and members of the international press.

On arrival at the structure, which was being guarded by 3 jeeps of soldiers of Israeli army, the Palestinians began to take the structure down. The soldiers forced the farmers away from the site into nearby trees where a number of the group sat down and refused to move from their land. … Continue reading

Update: at approximately 1:30 pm Monday, after calls from several people in the Palestinian Government, Mousa Abu Maria was kissed on the head by the head of the police in Hebron, apologized to, and released from custody. The police claimed they didn’t know who he was when they illegally arrested him the night before. They would not explain why he and Younis Arrar from the National Committee of Beit Ommar were on their list of people to arrest and claimed they were looking for car thieves during their operation in Beit Ommar overnight.

While Salam Fayyad and other PA minsters march in Bil’in declaring their support of the Popular Resistance, the Palestinian police have continued to repress any such … Continue reading

Saturday morning in a mass solidarity action organized by Palestine Solidarity Project, a group of over 30 international and Israeli activists accompanied farmers from Saffa, Beit Ommar as they together cleared rocks from fields and prepared land for planting olive trees. Israeli soldiers and Border Police arrived within the hour and declared the field a Closed Military Zone as the agricultural work constituted a threat to the security of the illegal settlement.

On the trail back to Saffa local youths attached Palestinian flags to the front of jeeps in defiance of the heavily armed soldiers.

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Friday night, after a demonstration in Beit Ommar in solidarity with Jerusalem, Yousef Abu Maria and Ahmed Abu Hashem (Abu Maria) both had their homes raided by the Israeli military. Yousef, who was detained at a demonstration on Route 60 two weeks previously, the coordinator of the National Committee of Beit Ommar and a PSP organizer, was beaten as soldiers invaded his home, overturning furniture and threatening more violence if demonstrations continued. They also questioned him about his brother, Mousa, whose home was raided two weeks previously, along with the Palestine Solidarity Project’s office.

Ahmed Abu Hashem, a prominent activist in Beit Ommar, also had his home broken into in the early hours or Saturday morning, and threatened with … Continue reading

At 13:25 Friday afternoon 8 Military jeeps and personnel carriers invaded Beit Ommar in force firing dozens of rounds of rubber coated steel bullets, stun grenades and at least 40 tear gas grenades. The town youth forced the army and Border Police to retreat to the outskirts of the town with a constant barrage of stones.

In a co-ordinated series of non-violent protests across the West Bank today thousands of Palestinians protested peacefully against the Israeli restrictions imposed on access to the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, part of a week-long clampdown on Palestinians in Jerusalem which began when the Israeli government announced the construction of 1500 new housing units in East Jerusalem.

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