 JENIN, (PIC)-- Israeli occupation forces (IOF) served demolition notices to 15 farmers in west Jenin for demolishing their artesian wells, and a notice for a citizen to demolish his house under the pretext of being built in "C" zone without authorization.Local sources said that IOF soldiers launched an extensive military campaign this afternoon in the village of Kfar Dan west of Jenin during which the infantry units swept the agricultural lands of the village. Citizens stated that Israeli soldiers handed over Mahmoud Arqawi an order to demolish his house, currently under construction, claiming that it was being built in "C zone". The local sources noted that there are nearly 100 artesian wells in the region used to irrigate thousands of dunums of land planted with vegetables and greenhouses, and that the IOF had previously destroyed 30 wells during the past two years in the same area. |
Showing posts with label Jenin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jenin. Show all posts
Shami al-Shami is recovering from gunshot wounds in a Jenin hospital
Shot lawmaker: Attacker wanted to kill me
JENIN (Ma’an) -- Fatah lawmaker Shami al-Shami, who was shot early Sunday in his hometown of Jenin, told Ma'an from hospital that he believes the unknown assailants aimed to kill him.
Al-Shami was wounded by two bullets in his right thigh and is recuperating in Jenin government hospital. Medics say his wounds are moderate.
The deputy told Ma'an he had returned to his home after work about 1.30 a.m. Sunday morning. As he left his car to open the garage he heard gunfire towards him.
Al-Shami said a man shot between eight and ten bullets at him, two of which hit him while he was hiding behind his car.
He said he was unable to identify the shooter as he fled the scene, but noted that the gunman had been waiting near his house for his arrival.
The lawmaker said the incident was just the latest attempt to destablize Jenin and called on Palestinian security services to apprehend anyone who undermines security.
Jenin Governor Talal Dweikat told Ma'an earlier that security services were exerting major efforts to try and discover the assailants as soon as possible.
Palestinian security forces have led a crackdown in the Jenin district after assailants opened fire on the home of Jenin Governor Qaddura Musa in early May.
The governor died of a heart attack the same night.
Al-Shami was wounded by two bullets in his right thigh and is recuperating in Jenin government hospital. Medics say his wounds are moderate.
The deputy told Ma'an he had returned to his home after work about 1.30 a.m. Sunday morning. As he left his car to open the garage he heard gunfire towards him.
Al-Shami said a man shot between eight and ten bullets at him, two of which hit him while he was hiding behind his car.
He said he was unable to identify the shooter as he fled the scene, but noted that the gunman had been waiting near his house for his arrival.
The lawmaker said the incident was just the latest attempt to destablize Jenin and called on Palestinian security services to apprehend anyone who undermines security.
Jenin Governor Talal Dweikat told Ma'an earlier that security services were exerting major efforts to try and discover the assailants as soon as possible.
Palestinian security forces have led a crackdown in the Jenin district after assailants opened fire on the home of Jenin Governor Qaddura Musa in early May.
The governor died of a heart attack the same night.
Army storms several villages in Jenin
The Heart of Jenin: ‘Do you think the Israelis liked what I did? Some would have preferred it if I’d blown myself up’
The remarkable story of Ismail Khatib, a Palestinian father from the West Bank city of Jenin, continues. After his son Ahmed was shot by israeli soldiers in November 2005, the Khatib’s courageously donated their beloved 12 year-old’s organs to a number of recipients in israel, to both Arabs and Jews.
The story is the subject of the documentary film released last year, The Heart of Jenin, in which two directors, German Marcus Vetter and Israeli-American Leon Geller, accompanied Ismail for two years as he paid visits to the children who received his son’s organs.
Ahmed’s kidneys, liver, lungs and heart were transplanted to recipients ranging from a seven-month-old baby to a 58-year-old woman. Those who received organs included Arabs, Jews, and a Druze girl.
Despite having themselves suffered considerably under israeli occupation and despite the heart-wrenching circumstances in which 12 year old Ahmed died, his father also consents to one of his organs going to help a child from an illegal settler family, whose awful responses in the documentary are in stark contrast with Khatib’s dignity and humanity.
The Deutsche Welle ARTS.21 program speaks with the filmmakers and Ismail Khatib (opening clip above), followed here by a Radio Netherlands audio interview and the film’s trailer.
Heart of Jenin Excerpt (<3>
“You are killing us, we are giving you life, we are the winners.”
This Radio Netherlands audio is also worth a listen (12 minutes). It is significant that at the 2.20 mark the Khatib’s cast doubt on the IOF claim that their son was even holding a toy gun, and listen to the illegal settlers.
Wither US media?
If you do an online search on either the film or the father’s name incidentally, you’ll find European media outlets and Middle East-related blogs on this rather remarkable story of generosity and caritas, but what about US media?
Except for an editorial in the LA Times, the US media has been noticeably absent in according the story the attention it clearly merits (the embedded links in the last sentence are from Canadian, UK and Australian media).
EI’s Maureen Clare Murphy has a very good review following the film’s screening in the Chicago film festival in April this year, in which she writes:
The message of the film is not that if only there were more brave Palestinians like Ismail willing to “reach out” to their oppressors, maybe more children like Ahmad would be spared such a violent fate (even if this is how the film seems to be marketed). The directors of the film do not play to this agenda. Rather, they present the more disturbing reality: that despite Ismail’s decision, and despite subjecting himself to an undignified meeting with the Orthodox Jewish family, nothing has changed in terms of Israeli-Palestinian relations.
Although there are many scenes at checkpoints, illustrating very well the bureaucratic siege that weighs down on everyday Palestinian life, what is most remarkable about the film is how it shows the parallel, profoundly unequal existence of Jews and Arab minorities in Israel. The Arab citizens of Israel in the film all speak Hebrew; however, the Jewish family (the couple’s parents were not born in the country) do not speak Arabic. While the father of a Bedouin boy who receives one of Ahmad’s organs explains the discrimination his community faces (”I’m an electrician without electricity”), the Orthodox Jewish family seem totally unaware that their daughter was in the same hospital room as the Bedouin boy. It is clear that the family — the Levinsons — are incapable of imagining an Arab family in the same circumstances as they, and seem to think that all Arabs and Muslims roam around with weapons, seeking to kill Jews. Meanwhile, the other organ recipient followed in the film is a vivacious adolescent girl from the Druze community. (Another organ recipient didn’t survive the transplant, and two others chose to remain anonymous.)
Yaakov Levinson is portrayed rather unflatteringly — his blind righteousness probably the reason he volunteered to be included in the film. Yaakov characteristically says, upon learning that his daughter (still in surgery) was receiving the organ of an Arab, “of course I would prefer him [the donor] to be Jewish.” Later, in an interview conducted in his home, Yaakov says, without a hint of irony regarding how Ahmad was shot dead in his own neighborhood by an invading army, “I don’t understand why Arabs can work here freely and we can’t work in their villages … we would get killed on the spot.”
In an unfortunate oversight, the filmmakers fail to identify that the Levinson family are colonists living in an illegal settlement in the occupied East Jerusalem area of Shuafat (they are only identified as living in Jerusalem). This context is especially crucial when blue-eyed, fair-skinned Yaakov suggests (again, without any sense of irony) that if things are so bad for Ismail in Jenin, that he emigrate elsewhere — perhaps to the US, or maybe London or Turkey.
So if Ismail isn’t surprised that no hearts and minds were won over with his choice to donate Ahmad’s organs, why did he do it? “Do you think the Israelis liked what I did?” Ismail asks, rhetorically. He answers, they would have preferred he killed a child in a suicide bombing operation “rather than saving one.” For Ismail, it seems, keeping one’s head held high and refusing to bow to his oppressor’s agenda is his way of resisting the occupation, and Heart of Jenin movingly honors his struggle.
Israeli troops assassinate a Palestinian resistance fighter near Jenin
Early Thursday morning, Israeli forces assassinated 23 year old Aladdin Issam Abu Al Rub. Al Rub was a local leader of the al-Quds brigades, the armed resistance wing of the Islamic Jihad. Before dawn, Israeli Special Forces invaded the southwestern Jenin town of Qabatiya.
It was 4:30 am in the northern West Bank. Al Rub’s father Issam describes awaking to the sound of an explosion in the house. “There were a number of soldiers inside with many of them pushing into the room where Aladdin’ and two of his brothers were sleeping.” The father of the 23 year old says that Israeli soldiers fired directly into the bed without a question.
The lower side of the wall in Aladdin’s bedroom that he shared with his brothers is blanketted with bullet holes. The mattress on the floor is splattered with blood. His brother Mohammad said, “what happened was horrible. My brother was asleep and I opened my eyes from the blast in the hall and I saw the soldiers over our heads. Before a word they fired several shots at Aladdin’, and killed him in his bed.”
The military said that Aladdin was killed during an exchange of gunfire with Special Forces troops. The Israeli Army added that he had a gun and an explosive belt. In its statement, al-Quds Brigades said that the fighter exchanged fire with the invading forces after they surrounded his home. The Brigades added that this assassination will be met with a “fierce and land shaking retaliation”, and that “the enemy will pay a heavy price for this crime”.
There were no weapons, no Kalashnikov machine gun bullets or a homemade bomb in the house, reports the Abu Al Rub family, despite Israel's claims. “These false claims mislead the facts of what the occupation forces committed, the execution, in cold blood, of someone they could have arrested,” Issam Al Rub said today.
Issam, Al Rub’s father, says that following the killing, “occupation forces seized the body of my son inside the house and expelled me outside. They proceeded to search the contents and made more explosions that caused partial destruction of the walls.” Two hours later Israeli forces returned the corpse of Aladdin Issam Abu Al Rub to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. He was then taken to Dr. Khalil Suleiman Memorial Hospital in Jenin, where doctors report the young man died from three gunshot wounds to the head and chest.
Army sources stated to Israeli media that the fighter was planning attacks against Israeli civilians, adding that two weeks ago, the Israeli Army kidnapped five members of a cell that Abu Al Rob led in Jenin, and that their interrogation led to intelligence information that prompted the Israeli forces to carry out the attack.
The Israeli high Court of Justice ruled in 2006 that if it is possible to detain, question and put on trial, to those who are suspected of military acts against Israel, then this should be done instead of a targeted assassination.Nafha: “Occupation forces kidnapped 250 Palestinians in April”
Media Office of the Nafha
Society for Defending
Detainees Rights and
Human Rights
published a report on
Saturday stating
that Israeli occupation
forces kidnapped
250 Palestinians since the
beginning of April.
The Society added that 90 of the kidnapped residents were from Nablus,
and the rest were from Hebron, Bethlehem, Jenin, Tulkarem, Qalqilia
and Salfit.
The Society said that soldiers kidnapped 40 children and two
women in April. The two women aged 20 and 28 are from
Hebron and Balata refugee camp in Nablus.
11 of the kidnapped children are from Nablus, 10 are from
Tulkarem, 6 are from Hebron, 3 from Salfit, 2 from Qalqilia,
one from Bethlehem and one from Jenin.
The Society added that soldiers also kidnapped a political analyst
identified as Ali Jaradat after breaking into his home in Ramallah,
and also kidnapped Hazim Dweik, the son of the detained head of
the Palestinian Legislative Council, Dr. Aziz Dweik.
Soldiers also kidnapped several university students, especially
students of Al Najah University, Bir Zeit University and Al
Quds Open University.
The Society also slammed the ongoing violations carried by the
Israeli soldiers on roadblocks across the West Bank.
Israeli town sues Google over claim it was built on Arab village
"Hell Most
of what is
called Israel
Was created on
Palestinian Land
was made
from
ruins of
Arab villages
Israel destroyed"
The northern
town of Kiryat Yam is suing Internet giant Google
for slander, a local official said Monday, because
a feature of its worldwide map service shows the
town was built on the ruins of an Arab village.
The dispute brings together two controversies,
one old and one new. Officials from the town
deny they displaced Arabs during the War of
Independence, and Google is defending the
practice of allowing any surfer to change
information in its files.
Kiryat Yam is a town of 40,000 on the Mediterranean
coast just north of the port of Haifa. An entry on
Google Earth, a feature that allows users to zero
in on locations around the world, alleges that
the town was built on the ruins of Ghawarina,
an Arab village.
Hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled or
were expelled during the 1948-49 war.
Pushing back invading Arab armies, the forces
from the new Jewish state also overran Arab
villages, destroying dozens.
Kiryat Yam was pulled into the dispute when
a Google Earth user, Thameen Darby, inserted
a note on the map saying it was built on the
location of Ghawarina. Darby has inserted at
least 10 such notes over Google's map of Israel.
"Kiryat Yam filed a slander complaint with
Israel's police," said town official
Naty Keyzilberman. "This obviously cannot
be true, because Kiryat Yam was founded in
1945, he said, explaining the police complaint."
Darby, 30, a Palestinian doctor raised in the
northern West Bank town of Jenin, said his
mother was a refugee from to the village
Balad al-Sheikh near Kiryat Yam. He said
his contributions to Google Earth are part
of the Nakhba - Palestinian Catastrophe
information hub aimed to help displaced
Palestinians understand their heritage or
find the villages of their parents or grandparents.
"As far as I can know, the Arab Ghawarina
locality was in the place depicted," Darby
told The Associated Press. He noted that he
may have not marked the exact location and
"if proven wrong by reliable sources, I will be
quick to reallocate it."
Darby's Web site pinpoints Ghawarina on
the site of Kiryat Yam, but another places
it south of Haifa at the site of a present-day
Arab town, Jisr el-Zarka.
Above Kiryat Yam, Darby wrote, this is one
of the Palestinian localities
evacuated and destroyed after the 1948
Arab-Israeli war.
Asked to respond to the police complaint, a
Google spokesman said Google Earth depends
on user-generated content that reflects what
people contribute, not what Google believes is
accurate. The spokesman would not give his
name, in keeping with company policy.
The spokesman insisted that the altered map
is not illegal, and Google's
policy is not to remove such postings.
Israeli forces invade Jenin and kidnaps six
Israeli forces invaded the northern West Bank
city of Jenin and the two nearby villages of
Rummana and Zbuba, kidnapping six
Palestinians in the early hours of
Monday morning.
Local sources reported that at least 15 military
vehicles invaded the city of Jenin overnight
Sunday. Troops broke into a number of
houses and ransacked them.
Sources added two civilians were
kidnapped identified as Bassam Abu
Obeid,45, Khaled Abu Obeid, 30, adding
that troops messed vegetables stores and
confiscated some of the residents'
properties during the invasion.
In the eastern neighborhood of Jenin city, forces
kidnapped Majdi Ghbareya, 22 after
invading his home.
Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers invaded two
villages of Rumana and Zbuba west of Jenin,
attacking several civilians' homes and kidnapping
three, only from Zbuba village. The detainees were
lately identified as Abed Al Rahman Jaradat, 23,
Omar Zaghal, 25 and Diya' Obeidi, 29, from
Zbuba village and all were moved
to an undisclosed destination