Yesterday, March 22, we gathered at the spot on the highway where the accident took place to put up a memorial in the children’s honor, and to protest the neglect of the Israeli soldiers during the accident. According to many of the people in attendance, these children were not only victims of a horrible accident, but also of the occupation and the Israeli military that did little to save them. We marched towards the checkpoint from the crash site, and as we approached, the Israeli soldiers threatened to attack us with tear gas if we came any closer. The governor, at this point, made the decision to go back and not provoke the soldiers any further.

water level can be seen from recent flooding

Sherinne Alaraj explaining the family's situation

In Qalandiya, near Qaladiya check-point, (the main checkpoint to Ramallah) a demonstration took place in honor of women’s day, there were about 100 hundred people, Palestinians, internationals and Israelis. Soldiers fired tear-gas, and sprayed skunk (an organic material that makes people nauseous). Also soldiers used LRAD a very high pitched noise meant to confuse demonstrators, as well as noise bombs. Many people just walking by breathed tear-gas, as soldiers fired in a main road, including families with small children and babies.

Soldiers at the demonstration for International Women's Day fired tear gas and sound bombs

Talat Ramia, 25, suffered a gunshot wound to the chest and five others were injured, medics at the Palestine Medical Complex said. Ramia died during surgery, they said.

Israeli forces were firing tear gas and both live and rubber bullets at protesters gathering near the Qalandia checkpoint after hearing rumors of a raid on a holy site in Jerusalem.

An Israeli army spokesman said the incident was under investigation.

During the day the families celebrated with dances and speeches. At a certain point, Israeli Forces attacked the gathering shooting tear gas, rubber bullets, and using the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), otherwise known as the scream. LRAD emits high pitched frequencies that have the capacity of leaving those affected dizzy, nauseous, and at times incapacitated. At least four people were injured in the attack, including Linda Shalash, a reporter for Al Quds TV.

Several prisoners from Beit Ommar were released on Sunday as part of the prisoner exchange including Majde Za’aqiq, a member of the National Committee Against the Wall and Settlements in the village. Majde was arrested last August at the weekly unarmed demonstration in Beit Ommar, and he spent the last four months in Israeli prisons. Several Beit Ommar residents were also among those attacked outside of Ofer prison while they were waiting for their family members to be released.

While the protesters were demonstrating peacefully hundreds of yards away from the spring the Israeli military fired dozens of tear gas canisters at them. As demonstrators returned to the village, Israeli military forces illegally shot tear gas canisters directly at them from close range. The demonstrators were blockaded on the road on which Mustafa Tamimi was shot in the face with a tear gas canister and killed a few weeks ago. In addition to tear gas the military used concussion grenades, rubber bullets, a high frequency sound crowd control device (“the scream”) and live 0.22″ caliber ammunition, banned for crowd control purposes.

A member of the press was injured after being struck in the leg with a tear gas canister, as was an international solidarity activist. A Palestinian youth was injured as he fell while fleeing from the tear gas. Another Palestinian youth was shot in the leg with live .22” caliber ammunition and was taken by an ambulance. The demonstration dispersed when the military approached with a water cannon and tanker of “skunk” water. There were no arrests.

This week’s demonstration decried the murder of Mustafa Tamimi, a 28-year-old Palestinian activist from the village of Nabi Saleh, who was shot in the face from close range with a tear gas canister fired by Israeli Forces during an unarmed demonstration two days before. Mustafa died of his wounds early Saturday and his funeral was attacked by Israeli soldiers who fired tear gas and concussion grenades at his friends and family who has gathered to mourn his murder.

During the demonstration in Beit Ommar, more than a dozen Israeli soldiers blocked the path of the villagers, who waved Palestinian flags and chanted against the occupation. The demonstration ended after a while without any injuries or arrests.

On Friday, December 9, 2011, Mustafa Tamimi, a 28-year-old Palestinian activist from the village of Nabi Saleh, was critically injured by Israeli Forces after he was struck in the face by a tear gas projectile. Mustafa was injured during Nabi Saleh’s weekly unarmed demonstrations against the Israeli settlements on village land. These weekly demonstrations are aften met with severe repression by Israeli Forces, who use exessive force resulting in the injuries of dozens, as well as mass arrests.

For video, watch below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ5DipqScyE&sns=em

According to witnesses, Mustafa was critically injured with nearly half his face gone after being hit with the tear gas canister from a close range. As medics attempted to evacuate him to a hospital, Israeli Forces initially prevented the ambulance from letting them leave the area.

A female demonstrator also had her arm broken during the demonstration, and a Palestinian youth sustained a fractured leg after being shot with a rubber-coated steel bullet.

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.

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