West Bank, March 21, 2010 (Pal Telegraph) - At the weekly demonstration in An Nabi Saleh in the West Bank, 25 participants were injured, windows of cars and homes were intentionally shattered and three were arrested. International Solidarity Movement (ISM) volunteer Ellen Stark was shot at point-blank range (4 meters) with a rubber-coated steel bullet as she stood with medics, Popular Committee members and other internationals. ISM co-founder Huwaida Arraf was arrested while negotiating with the IOF to allow Stark through the military line to get to the hospital.
According to Stark, "we were standing on Palestinian land, in support of the village whose land has been confiscated, but we weren't even demonstrating yet. We were standing with medics who were also shot with tear gas."
More than an hour before the demonstration began, soldiers took position on a hilltop near the house of an An Nabi Saleh Popular Committee member, signaling to activists that the peaceful march would likely be cut short yet again by soldiers using crowd dispersal tactics such as tear gas and sound grenades. As the demonstration began, IOF soldiers blocked the path of the activists and began to surround them from multiple sides.
Only 10 minutes into the demonstration, the army began firing tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets at a small group of international, Israeli and Palestinian activists just four meters away, injuring ISM volunteer Ellen Stark. Omar Saleh Tamimi, Amjad Abed Alkhafeez Tamimi and ISM co-founder Huwaida Arraf were arrested as they asked Israeli military personnel to stop firing tear gas canisters and rubber bullets at Stark as she was helped to safety.
Israeli forces then entered the center of the village, where they continued firing tear gas, sound grenades and rubber bullets for several hours. More than 25 participants were injured, including an 84-year-old woman who suffered from inhalation after tear gas canisters were fired into her house, and three others who were shot with rubber bullets, including an Israeli activist; four remain hospitalized.
Later in the demonstration, soldiers began shooting rubber bullets through the windows of residents' houses, shops, and cars, shattering their homes and livelihoods.
These incidents occurred as the Israeli government intensified repression of the unarmed, popular resistance to the occupation of the West Bank; illegal land confiscation by settlements, such as Halamish; and construction of the illegal apartheid wall. Two weeks ago in An Nabi Saleh, 14-year-old Ehab Fadel Beir Ghouthi's skull was fractured by a rubber-coated steel bullet shot by the Israeli military, leaving him in a coma for several days. He remains in a hospital in Ramallah where he is recovering; his condition is stable and improving.
Every Friday since January, around 100 un-armed demonstrators leave the village center in an attempt to reach a spring that borders land confiscated by Jewish settlers. The District Coordination Office has confirmed the spring is on Palestinian land. However, nearly a kilometer before reaching the spring, the demonstration is routinely met with dozens of soldiers armed with M16 assault rifles, tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades.
The Halamish Settlement has confiscated nearly half of An Nabi Saleh's orchard and farmland since it was founded in 1977. According to village residents. the settlement confiscates more land each year without consent or compensation of the landowners.
.jpg)
