On Saturday, April 23, eight Israeli activists and 24 international volunteers joined residents of Beit Ommar for an action near Karmei Tsur organized by the Beit Ommar National Committee Against the Wall and Settlements. The international contingent included volunteers from the Palestine Solidarity Project and International Solidarity Movement, as well as the Belgian group Checkpoint Singers. The demonstrators gathered in the lands near Karmei Tsur, and marched towards the settlement carrying flags and signs and chanting against the occupation.

As the protest neared the settlement, soldiers from the Israeli Defense Forces lined the path. The protest continued beside the military for several hundred feet, before the soldiers stepped out and blocked … Continue reading

On the morning of Monday, April 11th, volunteers from the Palestine Solidarity Project joined with the National Committee of Beit Ommar to complete planting in the Saffa region of the village. Seven village residents and five internationals met in the fields across from Bat Ayn settlement at 8:00 am. Upon their arrival, they discovered arrival that olive saplings in a field planted on Saturday had been uprooted, presumably by settlers or Israeli military forces.

The farmers and volunteers quickly planted the forty remaining olive trees set aside for the region. Once the new trees were in the ground, the group returned to the previous planting site and … Continue reading

Mohammed Abd Alhamid Soleibi has lost land before.

Four years ago, twelve dunams of farmland near Karmei Tsur—land for which he had all the appropriate deeds and documentations of ownership—was surrounded by a fence, essentially annexed by the settlement. This left the seventy-year-old farmer with eighty-eight dunams about a kilometer and a half from the settlement of Bat Ayn in the Saffa Valley. He shares this land with his extended family—in all, around one hundred and fifty people make use of it.

Around eight thirty on the morning of Saturday, April 2nd, Mohammed went out to his remaining land with his brother, sons, and grandson. He and his grandson took a donkey and began plowing one field while the others worked … Continue reading

Around 12pm on Monday, March 21st, 2011, two Palestinian residents from the village of Beit Ommar in the southern West Bank were shot with live ammunition by an Israeli settler. The settler stopped his car on Route 60 as a funeral procession was moving towards the village cemetery and started firing indiscriminately into the crowd of mourners.

59-year-old Mohammad Ali Abu Safiyya was hit in the chest and is in critical condition in a Hebron hospital. 32-year-old Eyad Bassem Za’qiq was shot in his right thigh. The settler who shot the two men was not arrested.

Israeli Forces arrived on … Continue reading

On Saturday, March 12, 2011 at around 8pm, three bus loads full of Israeli settlers entered the village of Beit Ommar, breaking into at least two residences and beating the Palestinian occupants. The attacks seemed to be coordinated as part of other settler violence across the West Bank. Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians in villages near Nablus, Ramallah, and Hebron.

In Beit Ommar, three buses of settlers from Bat Ayn and Kiryat Arba Settlements stopped on Route 60 near the entrance of the village. The settlers entered a residence close to the Israeli watchtower, breaking everything inside the house and smashing flower pots … Continue reading

On Tuesday, March 8th, 2011, about 70 Palestinians, supported by international solidarity activists, blocked Route 60 (a road that is heavily trafficked by Israeli settlers) near the entrance of Beit Ommar village, between the cities of Hebron and Bethlehem. Traffic came to a halt for almost half an hour as activists waved Palestinian flags and chanted against the occupation. The demonstration was organized as a collective response to increasing settlement expansion in the West Bank and frequent attacks by Israeli Forces on the Palestinian people.

Israeli Forces arrived at the scene just as the demonstrators were returning home. Several of the soldiers … Continue reading

On Saturday, March 5th, 2011, dozens of Palestinian residents from Beit Ommar, supported by international and Israeli solidarity activists, rallied against the nearby Israeli settlement of Karmei Tsur. A sizable contingent of Palestinian activists from Hebron were also present to support the demonstrations in Beit Ommar. Though the weekly demonstration is almost always repressed, on this week, the army was even more violent than usual. Israeli soldiers pursued activists through the fields on the outskirts of the village, throwing tear gas, sound bombs, and beating at least one journalist.

Additionally, six Israeli settlers began throwing stones at the demonstrators from behind the fence surrounding Karmei Tsur, in plain sight of the soldiers. Yousef Abu Maria, … Continue reading

During this week’s unarmed demonstration, on February 26th, 2011, around 70 Palestinians from the village of Beit Ommar, supported by more than two dozen Israeli and international solidarity activists, protested the nearby Israeli settlement of Karmei Tsur. Karmei Tsur is built on land illegally taken from Beit Ommar residents, and the settlement continues to expand.

This past Saturday, the demonstrators gathered at 1pm waving flags from different countries expressing international solidarity with Palestine. At one point, four settlers aggressively came out of the fence surrounding Karmei Tsur with large dogs and threatened violence. After some time, the settlers were told to leave the area by … Continue reading

On Friday, February 25th, 2011 at around 1pm, more than 1000 Palestinians, supported by Israeli and international solidarity activists, rallied in the city of Hebron to demand the opening of Shuhada street. Shuhada street was once one of the main economic and transportation hubs in Hebron, but now the street is completely closed to Palestinians and only Israeli settlers are allowed to use it.

This demonstration was particularly important as Israel, with the support of the United States, has increased settler expansion in the West Bank. The date chosen was also significant because it coincided with the anniversary of the massacre of 29 Palestinians inside the Hebron Ibrahimi … Continue reading

On the morning of Tuesday, February 22, 2011, Israeli Forces, along with the Israeli Civil Administration and several settlers, used two bulldozers and chainsaws to destroy Palestinian olive trees in Al-Jab’a, a small village to the north of Beit Ommar. All of the trees on 200 dunums of land were cut down. Additionally, several irrigation walls on these lands were bulldozed.

The trees belong to several Palestinian farmers, including Mousa Hamdan Abu Loha, Azat Abu Latifa, Ibrahim Mahmoud Abu Loha, Ahmad Sobhia, and Mohammad Abed Al-Latif.

The land where the trees were destroyed were located alongside the Israeli settlement of Bat Ayn. Settlers from Bat Ayn were seen felling trees with chainsaws while soldiers operated the … Continue reading