Update during Corona: A new form of torture has just been discovered

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Al Khadr

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Updates during Corona

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Irisit Segoli transferring report from Shushala

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Mar-24-2020

Afternoon

I called S. to ask how he and his family were doing, and to explain our lengthy absence.
S. and his extended family live in Shushala and have tended their land there for generations. All the land on the hill where Nabi Danial maqam (sacred site) belongs to villagers of Al Khader and other communities. At present the land of Shushala is caught between settler-colony Naveh Daniel and its outpost Sdeh Boaz (the aim is to connect Naveh Daniel to the huge colony of Efrat).

S. is happy to talk and says that now, in times of Corona, every evening at around 5:30 p.m. about 5-6 Israeli soldiers come to the house and demand of the family to evacuate it. When the family members refuse, and the soldiers are told that “you don’t care about me…”, they collect all the IDs and say the owners will get them back at Al Khader. The entire family goes down to Al Khader and waits for hours, at least until 9 p.m., when the IDs are returned. Thus, they are forced to sleep in Al Khader and go back up the hill only the next day.

The hill, the one large and last reserve farmland left in Palestinian hands throughout the Etzyon Bloc, is located entirely within Area C. This means that the farmers are not allowed to stay there overnight nor possess dwellings there. These people have suffered many tricks and violence at the hands of the Israeli system – and here’s the latest.

S.’s son is a heart patient, and gets treatment alternately in Hebron and in Beit Jala hospitals.

The man promised to send us a photo of the farmland that has just recently been planted with vines.

Why do we take the trouble to report in Corona times as well?

Because democracy’s watchdogs have fallen asleep on their own watch, so Israeli citizens have no idea what is actually happening in the Occupied Territories, especially now.

Day and night, Israeli soldiers (as the State’s emissaries) help extreme settler-colonists take the law into their own hands, unhampered. They do not stop even in days of a raging pandemic and do not hesitate to harm Palestinians – their bodies, property, and sources of livelihood.

Unceasing harassment of the weakened Palestinian population inflicts psychological harm as well. All – from babies through and including the elderly and the ill – are open prey to Jewish violence and terrorism which the settler-colonists are only too eager to exert.

We of MachsomWatch will not cease to report, certainly not now during these Corona times and under the threat of annexation, about the settlers’ increased rampages, those who hurry to set facts on the ground helped by the Israeli army.

Israel rules the West Bank, and by force of the Geneva Convention, article no. 27, it is committed to enforcing law and order there. The inhabitants of these Occupied Territories have the legal right “to decent treatment of their body and dignity, and should be especially protected against any act of violence”.

Ironically, this is not at all upheld.

Nor shall we cooperate with the commonplace ignoring of the Palestinian people’s suffering, and with the Israeli public’s indifference to it. We shall continue to follow up closely and report the goings-on in the West Bank, in its villages and encampments.

No one should be able to say ‘We knew nothing, we heard nothing’

Location Description

Al Khadr

See all reports for this place

Al-Khadr served as transit from Bethlehem to Route 60. A dirt mound prevent vehicular traffic from and to Bethlehem from the west. A small market developed there. Taxi ranks were on both sides of the obstruction. It was replaced by a similar obstruction at Al Nashash which has recently been removed and thus the way from Bethlehem to Hebron through Route 60 is now free.