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.

The demonstration is protesting against the illegal settlements all over the West Bank which is built on stolen Palestinian land, making it impossible for farmers to work on their land. The demonstration was also in solidarity with Ahmad Abu Hashem, member of the popular committee in Beit Ommar, who was arrested during the weekly demonstration last Saturday.

By Jody Rudoren

KHARAS, West Bank — The newest heroes of the Palestinian cause are not burly young men hurling stones or wielding automatic weapons. They are gaunt adults, wrists in chains, starving themselves inside Israeli prisons.

Each day since April 17, scores of Palestinian prisoners have joined a hunger strike that officials say now counts more than 1,500 participants. And on Thursday, the Palestinian Authority’s minister of detainees said that if Israel did not yield to their demands for improved prison conditions, the remaining 3,200 would soon join in.

The two longest-striking prisoners, who have gone without food for 66 days, appeared in wheelchairs before Israel’s Supreme Court on Thursday morning, pleading for their release from what is known here as administrative detention — incarceration without formal charges. One of them, Bilal Diab, 27, fainted during the hearing.

“I am a man who loves life, and I want to live in dignity,” the other man, Thaer Halahleh, 33, testified, according to an advocacy group that had a supporter in the courtroom. “No human can accept being in jail for one hour without any charge or reason.”

As the strike has swelled, the prisoners’ names and faces have been plastered on protest tents in villages throughout the West Bank. With the peace process stalled and internal Palestinian politics adrift, many analysts here see nonviolent resistance as a critical tactic for the Palestinian national movement, and the hunger strike as a potential catalyst to bring an Arab Spring-style uprising to the West Bank.

While the revolutions around the region have helped elevate support for the Palestinian cause, they have also undermined the leadership it has long relied on, and until now the streets here have largely remained quiet.

Prisoners play a crucial emotional and political role in Palestinian culture. Virtually every family has been touched by incarceration, experts say, and there is a visceral sense of allegiance to people viewed as suffering for the broader community’s rights. The prisoners are highly organized, and influential even on the outside.

On Thursday in Ramallah, 300 women marched to Al Manara Square, chanting, “Yes for hunger strike, no to submission” and “Down with the olive branch, long live the rifle.” By late afternoon, hundreds of protesters carrying Palestinian flags had gathered outside Ramle Prison, where many of the strikers are held, near Ben-Gurion International Airport in Israel, and scuffles broke out between the police and demonstrators. Several people were arrested.

“There’s a real transformation in the way the prisoners are working — this time, people are willing to die,” Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said in a recent interview. “Look, the Palestinians may be quiet for a while, but they may erupt. There’s a sinking-in of the idea that nonviolent resistance gets results.”

This week, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, promised to take the prisoners’ case to the United Nations. Khader Habib, the leader of Islamic Jihad, warned that “the martyrdom of Bilal Diab or Thaer Halahleh or any other prisoner will put an end to the calm, and the occupation will be held responsible for the consequences.”

But so far, the solidarity demonstrations have been small. About 30 people gathered on Tuesday at the Beituniya checkpoint outside Ofer Prison, chanting for 15 minutes before dispersing into two hours of clashes with Israeli soldiers and border police officers that left several injured.

“It’s obvious that people don’t care,” said Rizek Fadayel, who stood in the center of Ramallah earlier on Tuesday, holding a Palestinian flag and a framed photograph of his hunger-striking son, Rami, as a May Day band blared by.

“If your hand is in the fire, it’s not like your hand is in the water,” Mr. Fadayel, 65, said to explain the difference between those directly connected to the prisoners and those not. “I want to raise their voices and achieve their goals. If this situation will continue, we’ll be heading to a third intifada.”

Hunger striking by Palestinian prisoners is not a new tactic. According to the Palestine Solidarity Project, the tactic was first used in the Nablus prison in 1968 and has been repeated at least 15 times since, with three men dying over the years. Qadura Fares, the head of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, said that in 2004 virtually all of the Palestinians held in Israeli prisons took part in a two-week strike, and that the most ever was 11,000 prisoners, in 1992.

But social media have spread the siren this time, first on Khader Adnan, a member of Islamic Jihad who was released last month from administrative detention after a 66-day fast that left him in grave condition. Attention then shifted to Hana Shalabi, a female prisoner deported to Gaza after a 43-day strike, and is now focused on Mr. Halahleh and Mr. Diab, who also are members of Islamic Jihad, a radical and militant Palestinian faction.

In court on Thursday, after Mr. Diab fainted and Mr. Halahleh testified, the judge took a break to review their secret files, then returned without issuing a ruling, promising one soon, according to people who were in the courtroom.

Mr. Fares of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club said the goals of the current strike were to remove some of the restrictions that were imposed on prisoners before the release of a captive Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, including isolation, limits on family visits and denial of access to university classes. Sivan Weizman, a spokeswoman for the Israeli Prison Service, said that a team was working to address the requests and would meet again with the prisoners’ leaders within a few days.

For most of the days since Mr. Halahleh stopped eating, his relatives, neighbors and friends have kept vigil at his home here in a remote part of the Hebron hills from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., many of them also going without food in sympathy.

The men sit on white plastic chairs outside, spilling from a makeshift structure of black burlap and green two-by-fours, topped with Islamic Jihad flags and a banner with Mr. Halahleh’s portrait and a picture of a shackled wrist. Inside the white stone house — where family members say the son was arrested at 1:30 a.m. on June 27, 2010, by soldiers who came with dogs — women crowd on cushions on the floor, their heads covered by hijabs and their bare feet by blankets, praying and talking and pleading with the television in the corner for any speck of news.

“I am sitting with the women, but I am not here — my heart and feeling is with him,” Thaer Halahleh’s mother, Fatmeh, 58, said in an interview Tuesday night. “Sixty-five days. After two hours we feel that we want to eat. What about 65 days? We calculate the seconds.

“I am very afraid, but at the same time I am very proud,” she added. “I wish every Palestinian woman had a Thaer.”

Shireen Halahleh, 29, a physics teacher from Jordan, said that she married Mr. Halahleh in July 2009, and that he soon stopped political activity. He was arrested two weeks before the birth of their 22-month-old daughter, Lamar, who has seen her father only six times and goes to bed each night with his picture.

“He is a strong man; if he took a decision, he will do it,” Ms. Halahleh said.

“He does not represent himself,” she added. “He represents all of the Palestinian people.”

International aid workers and Israeli peace advocates are among those who have made the pilgrimage to the tent in recent days, family members said. On Tuesday night, Mr. Halahleh’s father, Aziz Mahmoud Halahleh, fingered a strand of orange and yellow plastic beads as he shared the details he had learned earlier in Ramallah.

“This is the last weapon,” the elder Mr. Halahleh said of the strike. “If any of the prisoners will lose their life, Israel or the Palestinian Authority could not stop the Palestinian people.”

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

Iyad’s release was followed by another raid last night, in the early morning hours of Wednesday, April 11, 2012. Israeli soldiers entered Beit Ommar, shot over a dozen canisters of tear gas at the houses, and arrested 18-year-old Hamza Nasr Abu Hashem. The Israeli military tried to arrest two others during the raid, but they escaped and are now wanted by the military.

For more information, see our Palestinian Youth Bail Fund and this urgent request from PSP co-founder Bekah Wolf.

Defense of Children International-Palestine released an urgent appeal on their website this week calling for action on behalf of Beit Ommar’s youth. In the last 6 months there has been a disturbing spike in detention of youth from Beit Ommar. Though the arrest, interrogation and even torture of youth in the West Bank is not unusual, there has been a clear attack on Beit Ommar’s youth, as Electronic Intifada reported here.

Palestine Solidarity Project has, since its inception, taken on the cost for the legal defense of as many residents of Beit Ommar as possible, as well as anyone arrested during non-violent demonstrations in the area. We work with amazing Israeli lawyers at the offices of Gaby Lasky, who are tireless in their defense of Palestinians arrested by Israeli Occupation Forces. Because of the marked increase in detentions of youth in Beit Ommar, PSP is in critical need of financial support for its legal defense fund.
In the last year, PSP has accrued 103,000 ILS (Approx. $28,000 USD) in the defense of Palestinians, the vast majority of which is for children. Palestinians can often spend months in jail if they do not get bail; excellent representation for them at initial bail hearings is essential to maximizing their chances of returning home quickly.

PSP is a totally independent Palestinian organization. 100% of our funding comes from private individuals around the world. We do not receive any financial assistance from any governmental body, including the Palestinian Authority. We depend on individuals such as yourself to continue to support the popular resistance of the Southern West Bank.

Donations to our legal defense fund can be made in two ways:

Donate via Paypal at: palestinesolidarityproject.org/donate

Or, from the United States or Canada, you can mail a check or money order, made out to “PSP-NY” to:
PSP-NY
P.O. Box 24281
Santa Fe, NM 87502

Additionally, a long-time international activist Jeff Pickert is doing a speaking tour of the United States and Canada to raise money for our legal defense and youth bail funds. You can book Jeff for a speaking event at your university, community center, church, synagogue or mosque by emailing palestineproject@gmail.com.

Documentation from the lawyers can be made available upon request.

Palestinians, especially young Palestinians, are putting themselves and their liberty on the line to defend their land and confront the occupation. It is our duty as internationals to provide support wherever we can.

Please give what you can today. You can also become a PSP sustainer at palestinesolidarityproject.org/donate. Join me in showing a commitment to Palestinian freedom and popular struggle by demonstrating that we won’t let Palestine’s sons languish in occupation prisons.

Sincerely,
Bekah Wolf

On Tuesday, April 3, 2012, activists from the Hebron district and Beit Ommar joined the municipality from Surif to assist farmer Yousef Hamad in planting olive trees on his land. Activists planted olive trees on six dunams of land in an area called Wad Assour. Wad Assour is very close to the Israeli settlements, and the separation fence is only 200 meters from Hamad’s farmland. The gate separating Wad Assour from the rest of the land, which originally belonged to Palestinian farmers before the fence was built, has been closed to Palestinians for ten years. The Israeli military frequently enters Surif through this gate to stop Palestinian farmers from working, claiming that they are working on Israeli land. Wad Assour is under Area C, which means it is under complete Israeli control. After planting trees, activists hung a Palestinian flag on the separation fence, which was taken down by Israeli soldiers within minutes.

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.

The settlement is practically on top of them. The settlements have a monopoly on the water, cutting off irrigation for Palestinian crops. The Bedouin in Om Al Kheir have to buy their water and bring it in from the outside. There’s a fence separating Karmel from Om Al Kheir, and on the settlement side, the land is lush and green, but the Palestinian side is brown and rocky. All electricity in the camp is solar-powered.

The settlements are literally just feet away from the Bedouin tents. According to the Bedouin there, the settlers say in court that they’ve stopped building, but the settlement construction continues. The Bedouin have pictures documenting this, but the courts pay no attention to their claims.

The Bedouin’s homes are frequently bulldozed, and every home has a demolition order except for two that have been there since before the settlement was established in the early 1980s. This area has been the home for the Bedouin for much longer than that, and the settlements are illegal under the 4th Geneva Convention. Nevertheless, the courts continue to rule in favor of the settlements.

Going through security, the Israeli security guards asked each person if they spoke Hebrew, then if they spoke Arabic. The first of the internationals to go through was an American woman. She answered the questions, admitting that she spoke no Hebrew, but she did speak Arabic. She explains,

“They laughed and said something in Hebrew that I didn’t understand, and I was pointed into another room and told to empty my pockets and take off my belt for a second time. The guard waved the wand over me, then groped me. She claimed she had to check the pockets that were on the front of my shirt, but rather than pull the front of my shirt away from my body, she roughly squeezed my breasts. She then put her hands inside all of my pants pockets, which did not happen to the other internationals, who do not speak Arabic. I felt humiliated and violated, and I felt like I wasn’t in a position to say no. I am very familiar with the discomfort of security pat-downs, but this went far beyond that. I can only explain this as part of the ongoing discrimination, humiliation and violations of human rights that are part of the occupation.”

After the four of them made it through security, they were told the session was already finished. The lawyer, Neri Rmata, filled them on what happened. The youths, whose ages range from 14 to 17, will spend 8-12 months in prison for throwing stones and similar light offenses. For three of the youths, it is not their first time in jail, and they will serve longer sentences. The court decided to release one of the boys, Ahmed Solaiby, on bail, but the decision was appealed. Court will resume on April 4th, and they will all remain in prison in the meantime. The expulsion of the eight boys from their town of Beit Ommar was not mentioned in court, and is not a possibility in their case. Several inaccurate reports have circulated around this case due to misunderstandings of the convoluted Israeli military court system and the understandable anxiety of the parents of these imprisoned children, but we will make every attempt to maintain an accurate account of the current status of their case on this website.