words against walls

Rock throwing in Palestine and Israel is primarily associated with the Intifadas and currently with various incidents involving Palestinian children in East Jerusalem. In these cases the stones throwers or perhaps innocent children are usually arrested or at least deterred from further activity by teargas. In fact, many Palestinian children as young as 6 have been detained and questioned (for example, a 10 year old accused; or the complete report by B’Tselem on the behavior of the police towards children in Silwan, Jerusalem), without informing their parents, or even arrested and held incommunicado for several days. When the hatred of Palestinians, however, which has been instilled in Israeli settler children takes hold, and settler children engage in such attacks, the army and the law look the other way. The stone throwing incident just prior to the forcible eviction of Israeli squatters from the Rajabi House in Hebron, when squatter children threw rocks at Palestinian families and children under the watchful eyes of their religious fathers is a case in point.

The following incident, which might very well have resulted in severe injuries, reveals once again the collusion of the military authorities with the radical settlers: there have been no arrests or further action by the military or police. The report was written by the attacked EA herself.

„Flying rocks!

On Saturday, November 20th 2010 I an EA currently stationed in Hebron walked down New Shalala Street returning to the apartment after monitoring the weekly Settler Tour through the Old City. Since my team members stayed behind playing football with Palestinian children I was only accompanied by another group of young Palestinian kids. By the time I left, about 4:40 pm, it was already dark and the streets were deserted.

While talking and joking with the kids I did not pay too much attention about my surroundings. Only when one boy shouted at me, he was way ahead of me on the other side of the street, I noticed that some strange things were about to happen. Stopping under a streetlight at an alleyway, connecting Old and New Shalala Street, I looked around, but did not see anything that worried me. Then suddenly stones were flying around me, one large piece nearly hit my head. It was then that I noticed a group of people standing atop a building, which is part of the Bait Haddassah settlement. Because of the darkness I was almost impossible to distinguish if these people were children or grown-ups. But because of the size, I assumed, they were children of different ages.
I went into hiding behind a building, standing next to a Palestinian woman, who seemed as petrified as myself. She was sobbing.
When the boy, who in the first place yelled at me, started calling me, saying something like ‘ok! ok!’ I took the woman by the hand, not before I checked myself that it was safe to get out of hiding, and ran across the alleyway. I was only then, that I realized the size of the stones. Some of the shattered pieces lay still in the street, but I dared to pick one up for the spots where the concrete hit the street, attack of Saturday Nov 20th, 2010.

On Sunday, November 21st 2010, I did the late morning Cordaba School walk. My position was at the stairs and since there were no settlers around, I approached the soldiers on guard. After telling them about the incident of the previous evening, they seemed not to believe me. One soldier offered me to take me inside the settlement in order to show him from which from which rooftop I was attacked. But because I only saw it from the direction of New Shalala Street I made the suggestion of walking there, taking a picture of the building and then returning to him. He agreed.
I walked back to the Checkpoint 56, talked to my team member M., asking her to take a picture in case I would walk up to the rooftop with the soldier again. She agreed. Before I returned to Shuhada Street I took pictures of the shattered stones, in fact they were pieces of concrete with a certain pattern on them, and the places where they had hit the street. I also picked one piece up and put in my pocket.
After returning to Shuhada Street, I asked the soldier to take me up to the roof of one the buildings we had been on before. He agreed. On our way, he mentioned, that it was impossible that the attack was performed from within the settlement because the military post on the rooftop is supposed to be occupied day and night.
After getting back to the roof I made clear that this was the place where I had seen the children standing and throwing the piece of concrete at me. He still denied the possibility that children get up there without being stopped by the guard. On my way to the edge of the rooftop I picked up a piece of concrete, which was lying about that place. I handed it over to him and pulled out the piece, which I had just picked up on New Shalala Street, evincing the same pattern on both pieces.

He turned quiet for a moment, asked me for my telephone number and promised to get back to me in case he would find out, who of his comrades had on duty that night and who the children were, who got up on the roof.
It was important to me to show a piece of evidence to proof my credibility.”

Am Mittwoch, dem 12. November verteilten Soldaten der IDF („Israel
Defence Force“) in der alten Tradition von „Zivil-Administration“ elf Bau-Stopp-Befehle in den zwei Teilen des Beduinen-Dorfs Um al-Khayr. Diese Anordnungen sind die bürokratischen-legalistischen Vorboten von Abrissbefehlen („demolition orders“). Die Beduinen dieser Häuser-Gruppen haben ohnehin kaum Bauarbeiten übrig, da die überwiegende Mehrzahl ihrer Hausbauten in etlichen Runden Hausdemolitionen bereits von der „Zivil-Administration“ geschleift wurden. (Siehe hierzu den kurzen Videoclip eines Abrisses von 2007, weshalb der Friedensaktivist Ezra Nawi, der versuchte die Demolition zu verhindern – dort zu sehen, vor kurzem zu 3 Monaten Gefängnisstrafe verurteilt wurde.) Diese jetzigen Befehle zum Abriss betreffen vorwiegend Zelte (gespendet von dem Internationalen Roten Kreuz nach der letzten Abrissrunde), Blechbaracken, einem Plumpsklo, eine Lochtoilette zusätzlich zu drei Häuser, die am weitesten entfernt von der israelischen Siedlung Carmel liegen.

Diese rücksichtslose Vorgehensweise deckt das wahre Ziel der zivil-administrativen Handlungen, nämlich das Leben der hier ansässigen Beduinen (die tatsächlich bereits schon 30 Jahre vor der Gründung der israelischen Siedlung in den 1980ern hier gelebt hatten) so unerträglich zu machen, dass sie ihre Behausungen „freiwillig“ verlassen würden.

Laut einem UN OCHA Bericht (United Nation Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs – occupied Palestinian territory) von November 2009 zählt Um al-Khayr noch zu den höchst gefährdeten Gemeinden in der West Bank (in den besetzten palästinensischen Gebieten).