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<h1 class="article-title"><b><i><font color="#ff0000"><small>2 articles
follow</small></font></i></b></h1>
<h1 class="article-title"><small>Israeli Soldiers Attack, Evict, Bab
Al-Shams, Arrest Dozens</small></h1>
<div class="article-subtitledetails">
<span class="article-details"><span class="article-detail">Sunday
January 13, 2013 06:22</span><span class="article-detail"><img
class="icon" src="cid:part1.05050609.08020903@freedomarchives.org"
alt="author"> by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC News</span></span> <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.imemc.org/article/64878">http://www.imemc.org/article/64878</a><br>
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Thousands of Israeli soldiers and policemen attacked, on Saturday at
dawn, the Bab Al-Shams Palestinian village, installed east of in
occupied East Jerusalem, and forcibly removed dozens of activists
loading them into buses.
<p class="article">The soldiers dragged several activists into the
ground, attacked reporters and journalist and declared the area as a
closed military zone, several injuries were reported.<br>
<br>
The Israeli decision to evacuate the village came, on Saturday, through
a direct order issued by Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu,
and his right-wing fundamentalist cabinet. <br>
<br>
Israeli daily, Haaretz, reported that by midnight Saturday, the order
was signed by Osnat Mandel, head of the Israeli High Court division of
the Justice Ministry, under the claimed that “the people and the tends
must be removed due to security considerations”.<br>
<br>
The Israeli Police said that the eviction order, issued by the court,
prohibits the army from removing the tens, but orders the removal of
the people staying there. <br>
<br>
Also, the so-called Israeli Civil Administration Office, run by the
occupation in the West bank, claimed that the Palestinian tent village
“was installed on state land”. <br>
<br>
But four Bedouin families living in the area confirmed that they own
the land, and even showed deeds proving ownership.<br>
<br>
Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, secretary-general of the Palestinian National
Initiative, who was also at the Palestinian village, stated that
hundreds of Israeli soldiers invaded the village after surrounding it,
and attacked the nonviolent activists camped there, and started
kidnapping them. <br>
<br>
The soldiers violently attacked the residents, including journalists,
elderly and women, and dragged several resident onto the ground. <br>
<br>
The soldiers repeatedly interrupted the work of local reporters,
flashing their lights onto the camera, and pushing the reporters away,
and dragged dozens of activists into buses that were brought by the
army to the area.<br>
<br>
On Saturday evening, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu,
ordered the army "to remove the Palestinians and their supporters from
the Palestinian outpost" that was installed on privately-owned
Palestinian lands to send a message to Israel and the entire world that
this land is the land of Palestine, and the Palestinian people have the
right to inhabit it. <br>
<br>
The army installed dozens of roadblocks around the area to prevent
Palestinian traffic and surrounded the Bab Al-Shams where around 200
activists installed around 20 tents declaring the Bab Al-Shams
Palestinian village, in the area were Israeli illegally declared it
intends to build thousands of homes for Jewish settlers, east of
occupied east Jerusalem. <br>
<br>
The Israeli decision to build the illegal settlements in the occupied
state of Palestine came after the Palestinians managed to obtain an
observer state status at the UN – General Assembly. <br>
<br>
The Israeli decision was met with international condemnation, but the
settler-led government of Benjamin Netanyahu, approved the illegal
settlement project. <br>
<br>
The so-called E1 settlement project aims at linking the Maale Adumim
illegal settlement, where 35000 reside, with occupied East Jerusalem,
thus illegally confiscating Palestinian lands and blocking geographical
continuity in the occupied West Bank. <br>
<br>
This illegal Israeli project would divide the West Bank into two parts,
and would completely isolate it from occupied East Jerusalem, an issue
that would prevent the establishment of a viable Palestinian state.<br>
<br>
Abdullah Abu Rahma, a Palestinian nonviolent activist from the West
Bank village on Bil’in, who was also detained when the army attacked
and evicted Bab Al-Shams, stated that this village is on private
Palestinian land, and that the Palestinians are not invading anybody’s
property, as they are establishing a village in the land of Palestine. <br>
<br>
“We tied our hands, chained ourselves with each other to prevent the
soldiers from removing us”, Abu Rahma said, “The Soldiers violently
attacked us, beat us, and injured at least 10”<br>
<br>
He added that there will be more nonviolent activities, and that the
struggle for Bab Al-Shams, the nonviolent struggle for the liberation
of Palestine will continue as the Palestinians are practicing their
internationally-guaranteed right.<br>
<br>
It is worth mentioning that the Palestine TV was live streaming from
Bab Al-Shams, and the army repeatedly tried to interrupt the stream,
pushing the reporters, and using large flashlight, pointing them
against the camera to disrupt the images.<br>
***************************************************<br>
</p>
<h1 class="title" id="page-title"><small>Eviction of Bab Al Shams
exposes Israel as a lawless state</small></h1>
<div class="field-author"> <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/max-blumenthal"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel">Max
Blumenthal</a> </div>
<div class="field-publisher"><small> <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/electronic-intifada"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel">http://electronicintifada.net/content/eviction-bab-al-shams-exposes-israel-lawless-state/12090</a>
</small></div>
<div class="field-location"> <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/location/ramallah"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel">Ramallah</a>
</div>
<div class="field-publication-date"> <span class="date-display-single"
property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime"
content="2013-01-14T00:17:00+00:00">14 January 2013</span> </div>
<div class="field-body">
<p>Israeli Prime Minister <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/benjamin-netanyahu">Benjamin
Netanyahu</a> was clearly troubled by the establishment of <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/bab-al-shams">Bab Al Shams</a>,
a Palestinian protest village erected on privately-owned Palestinian
land, the planned route of what Israel calls the “<a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/e-1">E-1</a>” corridor in the
occupied West Bank.</p>
<p>The E-1 area was to be capstone of Israel’s settler-colonial
enterprise, a long segment of housing units expanding east from the
Jews-only mega-settlement of Maale Adumim, permanently severing <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/east-jerusalem">East Jerusalem</a>
from the rest of the West Bank and virtually slicing the West Bank in
half. And now, 400 Palestinians and their supporters stood directly in
the way of the plan.</p>
<p>“We will not allow anyone to touch the corridor between Jerusalem
and Maaleh Adumim,” Netanyahu declared (“<a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israeli-security-forces-evacuate-activists-from-palestinian-tent-outpost-in-e-1-area.premium-1.493531">Israeli
security forces evacuate activists from Palestinian tent outpost in E-1
area</a>,” <em>Haaretz</em>, 13 January).</p>
<p>On 12 January, Netanyahu dispatched a lawyer from the justice
ministry to the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/israeli-high-court">high court</a>
to argue for the immediate eviction of Bab Al Shams. Despite the
government’s vehement objections to the presence of the Palestinian
village, the high court issued a temporary injunction preventing its
eviction for six days pending further deliberations.</p>
<p>As the clock struck midnight on Saturday night, Netanyahu summoned
his lawyers to author a statement overriding the high court. Treating
the court’s ruling as a mere suggestion, the Israeli justice ministry
concocted a justification that was as ludicrous as it was predictable:
“There is an urgent security need to evacuate the area of the people
and tents,” it claimed, suggesting without evidence that a few hundred
unarmed activists presented a grave threat to public safety.</p>
<h2>Journalists banned</h2>
<p>I arrived at the site of Bab Al Shams about two hours before
Netanyahu ordered its eviction. The main entrances to the tent
encampment were sealed off by squads of Israeli police. A police
commander told me and other journalists that no reporters were allowed
inside the area. Though he claimed to hold a formal order from the
military, he failed to produce any kind of documentation.</p>
<p>An Israeli journalist told me he had been told earlier in the
evening by Israeli army GOC Central Commander Nitzan Alon that he was
free to travel anywhere in the West Bank, but that “this [Bab Al Shams]
was something different.”</p>
<p>In order to enter Bab Al Shams, me and three colleagues had to first
navigate the narrow, pothole-scarred roads of al-Zaim, an impoverished
Palestinian town severed from the rest of the Jerusalem municipality by
Israel’s <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/israels-wall-west-bank">separation
wall</a> and a checkpoint. Though al-Zaim is already an overcrowded,
under-serviced ghetto prevented from expanding to meet the needs of a
growing population, the construction of the E-1 corridor would enclose
it on all sides, consolidating its isolation and forced immiseration.</p>
<p>At a muddy field strewn with trash at the outskirts of al-Zaim, we
climbed out of a small car and hiked towards Bab Al Shams, walking for
3 kilometers along a craggy path in the bone-chilling cold. There were
no signs of any army presence on our way, only vehicle caravans heading
out of the village to gather more supplies for the next day.</p>
<p>When we arrived at the base of the tent encampment, we found
Palestinian National Initiative Chairman Mustafa Barghouti giving an
interview to one of many international news outlets embedded in the
village. Barghouti had helped provide Bab Al Shams with medical
supplies, supplementing a growing infrastructure that included an
Internet hotspot and a kitchen.</p>
<p>At the entrance of the village, I found about a dozen residents of <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/bilin">Bilin</a> village
huddled around a campfire, sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes.
“Forget about the food,” Billin popular committee leader Abdallah Abu
Rahme joked. “If we don’t have cigarettes and coffee we won’t survive a
night here.”</p>
<h2>Popular struggle</h2>
<p>For almost eight years, the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/popular-resistance">popular
struggle</a> had been focused in rural villages near the Green Line,
the 1949 armistice line marking the boundary between Israel and the
occupied West Bank. Residents in these areas have waged a relentless
unarmed struggle against the separation wall.</p>
<p>In the past year, activists began to take their tactics beyond the
weekly ritual of village-based protests, organizing creative direct
actions like the blocking of settler access roads and a raucous protest
in the Rami Levy settlement supermaket. Bab Al Shams was evidence of
the new era of protest in Palestine, attracting Palestinian activists
from inside Israel and from northern West Bank cities like <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/nablus">Nablus</a> and <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/jenin">Jenin</a> not normally
associated with the popular struggle.</p>
<p>I spoke to Hamde Abu Rahme, a videographer from Bilin, about the
progression of protest tactics from the embryonic phase of the popular
struggle to the birth of Bab Al Shams.</p>
<p>“The people here have so much practice with resistance over the
years, and that explains our success,” Abu Rahme told me. “We have a
strong system of organization and of deciding what we all want, how to
best handle the army, and how to make sure everyone’s needs are looked
after. With all the roads closed, it wasn’t easy to make this village
happen, but people still came through the mountains and were willing to
stay here for three days without enough food, without shower, in the
freezing cold. You can see that people really want to be here, that
they are not acting because they have to be here.”</p>
<p><a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/abir-kopty">Abir Kopty</a>,
a Palestinian feminist and human rights activist serving as
spokesperson for the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/popular-struggle-coordination-committee">Popular
Struggle Coordination Committee</a>, challenged the widely reported
notion that Bab Al Shams was simply a Palestinian version of an Israeli
“settlement” or “outpost.”</p>
<p>“There is a huge difference here,” she told me. “We are building on
our own land unlike the settlers who are occupying and grabbing land
that isn’t theirs.”</p>
<p>At the same time, Kopty conceded that organizers of the protest
village were reacting directly to Israel’s colonial tactics.</p>
<p>“I do admit that we want to change the rules of the game,” she said.
“Israel has been imposing facts on the ground and we are doing exactly
the same. We want to impose facts on our land. So, yes, it might seem
that we have taken a model from them but the difference is that we are
building on our land and we are not taking others’ land and building on
it.”</p>
<p>At around 12:30am, I rode out of Bab Al Shams in the back of a
pickup truck loaded to the gills with journalists and activists. We had
no idea whether the army was set to raid tonight, or if it might wait
another day. With the news that the high court had issued a temporary
injunction against the eviction, we assumed the government would wait
to secure formal permission. We were wrong.</p>
<p>Towards the end of the rocky path leading into Bab Al Shams, and
just outside al-Zaim, we barreled by a detachment of Israeli border
police officers milling around a group of jeeps. It was clear now that
the raid was imminent, and that even if we wanted to re-enter Bab Al
Shams, there was no way back inside.</p>
<h2>Forced evacuation</h2>
<p>Two hours later some 500 border police troops in full riot gear
marched into Bab Al Shams and carried its inhabitants away by force.
According to reports from some of the 150 or activists inside, the
police attacked journalists, pushing them to the periphery of the
encampment so they could not record the brutality. Photos of those
injured during the raid suggest that the police severely assaulted
those who refused to leave quietly. Six Palestinians, including the
artist and activist Hafez Omar (a <a
href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1828129&l=d340c10326&id=185129341509315">photograph
of injured Omar</a> is circulating on Facebook), were so badly wounded
they required treatment at the Ramallah Hospital.</p>
<p>Under pressure from right-wing upstarts amidst a heated election
contest, Netanyahu ordered the eviction of Bab Al Shams in flagrant
contempt of the country’s high court. And not one of the judges issued
a word of protest. In a state guided not by the democratic rule of law,
but by the colonial imperatives of the occupation, Netanyahu’s roguery
was business as usual.</p>
<p><em>Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and best-selling
author.</em></p>
</div>
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