B'Tselem: Israeli security forces killed 660 Palestinians during 2006
By Haaretz Service
According to an annual B'Tselem report, from the beginning of 2006 to December 27, Israeli security forces have killed 660 Palestinians, a figure more than three times the number of Palestinians killed in 2005, which was 197.
The data compiled by the human rights organization also indicated a significant decrease in Israeli casualties. Palestinians killed 23 Israelis in 2006 - 17 civilians, among them one minor, and six Israel Defense Forces soldiers. The figure constitutes less than half of the 50 Israelis killed in 2005.
B'Tselem also listed the overall figures for casualties since the beginning of the intifada, with Palestinian casualties at 4005 and Israeli casualties at 1017, 701 of which were civilians.
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The report states that 2006 saw an improvement in the realization on Israeli civilians' right to life, while, on the other hand, also seeing "a deterioration in the human rights situation in the occupied territories, particularly in the increase in civilians killed and the destruction of houses and infrastructure in the Gaza Strip."
According to the report, about half of the Palestinians killed, 322, did not take part in the hostilities at the time they were killed. 22 of those killed were targets of assassinations, and 141 were minors.
The report says the majority of Palestinian casualties were killed in the Gaza Strip in the second half of 2006, following the capture of IDF Corporal Gilad Shalit. During this period, 405 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip alone, of them 88 were minors and 205 did not take part in the hostilities at the time they were killed.
According to the report, the IDF demolished 292 Palestinian houses, 95 percent of them in the Gaza Strip. These were home to 1,769 people.
B'Tselem's report says the owners of 80 of the homes received advance warning to the demolition. Israel demolished 42 additional homes in East Jerusalem that were built without a permit. These were home to about 80 people, according to the report.
The report indicates that movement restrictions in the West Bank became more severe in 2006. Israel currently maintains 54 permanent checkpoints in the West Bank that are usually staffed, and 12 other checkpoints within the city of Hebron.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, there is an average of 160 flying checkpoints throughout the West Bank every week.
In addition to the checkpoints, the report says IDF has erected hundreds of physical obstacles such as concrete blocks, dirt piles and trenches to restrict access to and from Palestinian communities. Palestinians have restricted access to 41 roadways in the West Bank, to which Israelis have unlimited access.
According to the report, as of November, Israel held 9,075 Palestinians in custody, including 345 minors. Of these, 738, including 22 minors, were held in administrative detention without trial and with no knowledge of the charges against them.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Thursday, December 21, 2006
another lie from IDF
IDF:
On the afternoon of December 8, 2006, IDF troops identified several armed
Palestinians in the Al Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem. The troops fired and
hit one of the armed men after clearly identifying him as an armed adult
Palestinian. After checking with all the involved forces, the IDF does not
recognize the further harming of any Palestinian in this incident except for
the one already mentioned. It is important to note that in the past three
months there has been a large increase of terror activities against IDF
troops from Al Aida refugee camp area, including the hurling of dozens of
explosives and the shooting onto the roads between the refugee camp and city
of Bethlehem.
On the afternoon of December 8, 2006, IDF troops identified several armed
Palestinians in the Al Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem. The troops fired and
hit one of the armed men after clearly identifying him as an armed adult
Palestinian. After checking with all the involved forces, the IDF does not
recognize the further harming of any Palestinian in this incident except for
the one already mentioned. It is important to note that in the past three
months there has been a large increase of terror activities against IDF
troops from Al Aida refugee camp area, including the hurling of dozens of
explosives and the shooting onto the roads between the refugee camp and city
of Bethlehem.
Monday, December 18, 2006
article: what are you going to do now Israel?
(8) What Are You Going to Do Now, Israel?
>
> By VIRGINIA TILLEY
>
> Counterpunch
> 15 December 2006
>
> http://www.counterpunch.com/tilley12152006.html
>
> Johannesburg, South Africa
>
> What are you going to do now, Israel?
>
> Now that three small boys have been killed by assassins'
> bullets, and a Hamas judge dragged from his car and
> murdered, perhaps you are pleased. The Palestinians are
> finally succumbing to your plots, you think. The
> long-planned bottle has finally been sealed, in which the
> "drunken cockroaches" can only crawl around, shooting each
> other.
>
> Maybe you are sitting back in your national chair, rubbing
> your hands together in triumph, watching the Palestinians
> finally turn on each other, slowly becoming what you
> always claimed they were. Maybe you are repelled, secure
> in your sense of superiority.
>
> But have you thought about what you are you going to do,
> if Palestinian leadership you despise finally
> disintegrates?
>
> You have brought them to this pass, of course. You worked
> for decades to achieve exactly this. You bribed,
> terrorized, expelled, maimed or killed their leadership,
> banned or killed their visionaries and philosophers,
> fanned and funded Hamas against Fatah or Fatah against
> Hamas, trashed their democracy, stole their money, walled
> them in, put them on a "diet", derided their claims, and
> lied about their history to the world and to yourself.
>
> But what are you going to do, Israel, if five million
> Palestinians are finally living leaderless under your
> sovereignty? What will you do, when they lose their
> capacity to negotiate with you? Have you thought that,
> within the territory you control, they are as many as you?
> And that now you are destroying their unified voice? Have
> you thought about what will happen to you if they truly
> lose that voice?
>
> Maybe you really believe that, if you only feed Fatah
> money and guns, Fatah will reclaim power from the Hamas
> and restore the craven puppet Palestinian government of
> your dreams. Maybe you actually believe that Fatah can
> revive the wreck of Oslo, step out of the rubble of PA
> offices, and reclaim the driver's seat of the Palestinian
> nation as before. Maybe you are telling yourself that,
> with just a few more inter-factional scuffles and
> assassinations and little more starvation, the entire
> Palestinian people will turn on Hamas and eject it from
> power in favor of grinning Mr. Abbas.
>
> But why would you believe all this, when the only other
> test-case, Iraq, is in ruins and the US and UK are
> desperately trying to flee?
>
> Do you really still live so deeply in your own fantasies
> that you believe Palestinian resistance is just the
> product of bad or obdurate leadership? That no collective
> memory of expulsion and dispossession sustains the spirit
> of collective resistance that will always and inevitably
> transcend that leadership? Do you really believe that, if
> only you can crush or co-opt Hamas and Fatah, five million
> people will simply disappear forever from your
> world--trail off across the Jordanian or Egyptian borders
> into the endless desert, clutching clothes, kids, and
> tarnished mementos, in some great reprise of 1948?
>
> Do you actually think that, if the international community
> finally lets you off the hook of negotiating with the
> people you have dispossessed and discredited, you will
> somehow walk free at last, your crimes against them
> forgotten?
>
> We know you are still pursuing the old, fatal, futile
> fantasy: finally to redeem the Zionist dream by
> demolishing Palestinian nationalism. To break Palestinian
> national unity on the rocks of occupation. To reduce the
> Palestinians to Indians on reservations who decline into
> despair, alcoholism and emigration. To make them
> irrelevant to you.
>
> But here is news for you, Israel. The Native Americans
> haven't given up to this day. Damaged and reduced as they
> are, they know their history and remember their
> grievances. They are marginal only because they are one
> percent of the US population. The Palestinians are
> five-million strong, equal to you in numbers. And they
> live within your borders. When their leadership ruins
> itself, bashing each other like rams fighting to the
> death, they will finally turn their five million pairs of
> burning eyes on you, for you will be the only power left
> over them. And you will be defenseless, because your paper
> shelter - your Fatah or PA quislings - will be damaged
> goods, cracked vessels, discredited, gone. And it will
> then be you and those you have disenfranchised - you and
> the Palestinians, in one state, with no Oslo or Road Map
> myth to protect you. And by then, they will truly hate
> you.
>
> Then perhaps it will dawn on you what you have done, when
> the disintegration of Palestinian national unity spreads
> out like a tsunami through the Middle East, meeting up
> with the tsunami spreading out from Iraq, to lay the
> region waste and rebound on you.
>
> Watching you create this catastrophe for yourself, we
> think you are simply suicidal. We could just watch, but
> your road to ruin promises too much suffering to too many
> people. Still, to avert your unilateral suicide pact with
> the Palestinians, to whom can we turn? We could appeal to
> Hamas at last to mobilize the rank and file, who alone
> have the capacity to launch civil disobedience on the mass
> scale necessary to paralyse Israel's iron fist, but Hamas
> has no experience with this method, and now its statesmen
> are cornered by the guns you gave to Fatah thugs.
>
> We could appeal to the leader of the Fatah thugs, Mr.
> Abbas, shuffling at the feet of Israeli power, to find
> some spine. Or to the ubiquitous Mr. Erekat, who never had
> a political vision in his life, to develop one overnight.
>
> We could appeal to the Fatah thugs to reject Mr. Abbas and
> Mr. Erekat and the fat cement contracts you gave them to
> build the Wall that imprisons them, and seek a high road
> they have never glimpsed.
>
> We could appeal to the microscopic PFLP and DFLP,
> clutching their old programs too stale to chew and
> consumed by their acrid, decades-old bitterness and
> rivalry with Fatah, to lift their heads at long last
> beyond the old and new grievances.
>
> We could appeal to the US, but no one bothers to do that.
>
> We could appeal to the EU, but no one bothers to do that,
> either.
>
> We could appeal to the world, but it only stands aghast.
>
> We could appeal to the world media, but it is frozen with
> its ass in the air.
>
> We can only appeal to you, Israel. To think what you are
> doing, if not to care.
>
> For you are crafting your own destruction.
>
> You have been so effective in this great national project
> because you work from experience. Even the most
> courageous, principled, and sensible people, as you
> learned, cannot withstand a concentration camp
> indefinitely. At some point, as the Holocaust historians
> have tracked with such pathos, humanity breaks down.
> Individual heroism may survive as memoirs, but order,
> humanity, and finally human feeling decays into factional
> squabbles and man's inhumanity to man. You learned all too
> well and bitterly how this cauldron can melt down the very
> fabric of a society and shatter people. The lesson is
> burned, literally, into your national memory. And you are
> bringing those lessons to bear, attempting to purge
> Zionism's tragedy by bringing Gaza to ruin.
>
> But if you actually reap the chaos you are crafting for
> the Palestinians, you will find that no one else is
> responsible for these five million civilians except you.
>
> So what will you do, Israel, with five million people
> living under your rule, when you can no longer pretend to
> the world that you intend to negotiate with them? What
> will you do with people you detest, and who finally
> utterly detest you, when visions of coexistence have
> finally failed? You will be the only sovereign power over
> them. You will be able neither to digest them nor to vomit
> them out. And they will stare at you. And we will stare at
> you, too.
>
> Because there will be no one left to blame, and no one to
> take care of them, except you.
>
> Virginia Tilley is a professor of political science, a US
> citizen working in South Africa, and author of The
> One-State Solution: A Breakthrough for Peace in the
> Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock (University of Michigan Press
> and Manchester University Press, 2005). She can be reached
> at tilley@hws.edu.
>
> By VIRGINIA TILLEY
>
> Counterpunch
> 15 December 2006
>
> http://www.counterpunch.com/tilley12152006.html
>
> Johannesburg, South Africa
>
> What are you going to do now, Israel?
>
> Now that three small boys have been killed by assassins'
> bullets, and a Hamas judge dragged from his car and
> murdered, perhaps you are pleased. The Palestinians are
> finally succumbing to your plots, you think. The
> long-planned bottle has finally been sealed, in which the
> "drunken cockroaches" can only crawl around, shooting each
> other.
>
> Maybe you are sitting back in your national chair, rubbing
> your hands together in triumph, watching the Palestinians
> finally turn on each other, slowly becoming what you
> always claimed they were. Maybe you are repelled, secure
> in your sense of superiority.
>
> But have you thought about what you are you going to do,
> if Palestinian leadership you despise finally
> disintegrates?
>
> You have brought them to this pass, of course. You worked
> for decades to achieve exactly this. You bribed,
> terrorized, expelled, maimed or killed their leadership,
> banned or killed their visionaries and philosophers,
> fanned and funded Hamas against Fatah or Fatah against
> Hamas, trashed their democracy, stole their money, walled
> them in, put them on a "diet", derided their claims, and
> lied about their history to the world and to yourself.
>
> But what are you going to do, Israel, if five million
> Palestinians are finally living leaderless under your
> sovereignty? What will you do, when they lose their
> capacity to negotiate with you? Have you thought that,
> within the territory you control, they are as many as you?
> And that now you are destroying their unified voice? Have
> you thought about what will happen to you if they truly
> lose that voice?
>
> Maybe you really believe that, if you only feed Fatah
> money and guns, Fatah will reclaim power from the Hamas
> and restore the craven puppet Palestinian government of
> your dreams. Maybe you actually believe that Fatah can
> revive the wreck of Oslo, step out of the rubble of PA
> offices, and reclaim the driver's seat of the Palestinian
> nation as before. Maybe you are telling yourself that,
> with just a few more inter-factional scuffles and
> assassinations and little more starvation, the entire
> Palestinian people will turn on Hamas and eject it from
> power in favor of grinning Mr. Abbas.
>
> But why would you believe all this, when the only other
> test-case, Iraq, is in ruins and the US and UK are
> desperately trying to flee?
>
> Do you really still live so deeply in your own fantasies
> that you believe Palestinian resistance is just the
> product of bad or obdurate leadership? That no collective
> memory of expulsion and dispossession sustains the spirit
> of collective resistance that will always and inevitably
> transcend that leadership? Do you really believe that, if
> only you can crush or co-opt Hamas and Fatah, five million
> people will simply disappear forever from your
> world--trail off across the Jordanian or Egyptian borders
> into the endless desert, clutching clothes, kids, and
> tarnished mementos, in some great reprise of 1948?
>
> Do you actually think that, if the international community
> finally lets you off the hook of negotiating with the
> people you have dispossessed and discredited, you will
> somehow walk free at last, your crimes against them
> forgotten?
>
> We know you are still pursuing the old, fatal, futile
> fantasy: finally to redeem the Zionist dream by
> demolishing Palestinian nationalism. To break Palestinian
> national unity on the rocks of occupation. To reduce the
> Palestinians to Indians on reservations who decline into
> despair, alcoholism and emigration. To make them
> irrelevant to you.
>
> But here is news for you, Israel. The Native Americans
> haven't given up to this day. Damaged and reduced as they
> are, they know their history and remember their
> grievances. They are marginal only because they are one
> percent of the US population. The Palestinians are
> five-million strong, equal to you in numbers. And they
> live within your borders. When their leadership ruins
> itself, bashing each other like rams fighting to the
> death, they will finally turn their five million pairs of
> burning eyes on you, for you will be the only power left
> over them. And you will be defenseless, because your paper
> shelter - your Fatah or PA quislings - will be damaged
> goods, cracked vessels, discredited, gone. And it will
> then be you and those you have disenfranchised - you and
> the Palestinians, in one state, with no Oslo or Road Map
> myth to protect you. And by then, they will truly hate
> you.
>
> Then perhaps it will dawn on you what you have done, when
> the disintegration of Palestinian national unity spreads
> out like a tsunami through the Middle East, meeting up
> with the tsunami spreading out from Iraq, to lay the
> region waste and rebound on you.
>
> Watching you create this catastrophe for yourself, we
> think you are simply suicidal. We could just watch, but
> your road to ruin promises too much suffering to too many
> people. Still, to avert your unilateral suicide pact with
> the Palestinians, to whom can we turn? We could appeal to
> Hamas at last to mobilize the rank and file, who alone
> have the capacity to launch civil disobedience on the mass
> scale necessary to paralyse Israel's iron fist, but Hamas
> has no experience with this method, and now its statesmen
> are cornered by the guns you gave to Fatah thugs.
>
> We could appeal to the leader of the Fatah thugs, Mr.
> Abbas, shuffling at the feet of Israeli power, to find
> some spine. Or to the ubiquitous Mr. Erekat, who never had
> a political vision in his life, to develop one overnight.
>
> We could appeal to the Fatah thugs to reject Mr. Abbas and
> Mr. Erekat and the fat cement contracts you gave them to
> build the Wall that imprisons them, and seek a high road
> they have never glimpsed.
>
> We could appeal to the microscopic PFLP and DFLP,
> clutching their old programs too stale to chew and
> consumed by their acrid, decades-old bitterness and
> rivalry with Fatah, to lift their heads at long last
> beyond the old and new grievances.
>
> We could appeal to the US, but no one bothers to do that.
>
> We could appeal to the EU, but no one bothers to do that,
> either.
>
> We could appeal to the world, but it only stands aghast.
>
> We could appeal to the world media, but it is frozen with
> its ass in the air.
>
> We can only appeal to you, Israel. To think what you are
> doing, if not to care.
>
> For you are crafting your own destruction.
>
> You have been so effective in this great national project
> because you work from experience. Even the most
> courageous, principled, and sensible people, as you
> learned, cannot withstand a concentration camp
> indefinitely. At some point, as the Holocaust historians
> have tracked with such pathos, humanity breaks down.
> Individual heroism may survive as memoirs, but order,
> humanity, and finally human feeling decays into factional
> squabbles and man's inhumanity to man. You learned all too
> well and bitterly how this cauldron can melt down the very
> fabric of a society and shatter people. The lesson is
> burned, literally, into your national memory. And you are
> bringing those lessons to bear, attempting to purge
> Zionism's tragedy by bringing Gaza to ruin.
>
> But if you actually reap the chaos you are crafting for
> the Palestinians, you will find that no one else is
> responsible for these five million civilians except you.
>
> So what will you do, Israel, with five million people
> living under your rule, when you can no longer pretend to
> the world that you intend to negotiate with them? What
> will you do with people you detest, and who finally
> utterly detest you, when visions of coexistence have
> finally failed? You will be the only sovereign power over
> them. You will be able neither to digest them nor to vomit
> them out. And they will stare at you. And we will stare at
> you, too.
>
> Because there will be no one left to blame, and no one to
> take care of them, except you.
>
> Virginia Tilley is a professor of political science, a US
> citizen working in South Africa, and author of The
> One-State Solution: A Breakthrough for Peace in the
> Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock (University of Michigan Press
> and Manchester University Press, 2005). She can be reached
> at tilley@hws.edu.
Saturday, December 16, 2006
after the shooting they asked where the bullets came from..
Dear All,
Below is a follow-up relating to the shooting of Miras Al-Azza on Friday, 8
December. Soldiers came to Miras' house in the middle of the night on
Friday, 15 December (see the description of events below written by his
father, Nidal Al-Azza) apparently looking for the machine gun. Attached are
also photos of the damage caused to the house by the "search" of the
soldiers. Nidal will also soon send you photos of the bullet holes.
We were wondering if there is anything UNRWA or OCHA can do to protect this
family from such harassment and intimidation, especially the children? Has
the Israeli army provided you with any official explanation on the cause of
the shooting. Nidal is thinking to pursue the matter in court and would need
your help.
You can contact Nidal at: media@badil.org or 277-7086.
All the best,
Karine
Summary of latest event - Search of the house of Miras' family in the middle
of the night, Aida Camp.
by Nidal al-Azza
Friday, 15 December 2006
In the night of Thursday to Friday on 15 December, between 3:30 to 3:40am,
more than 50 Israeli soldiers surrounded Al-Azza family in Aida camp. They
knocked the door strongly and shouted loudly "open the door quickly …"
Nidal and his brother Said woke up. Nidal reached the door first and opened
it. Immediately, they asked him: "Whats your name?" He replied "Nidal Al-
Azza." One of the soldiers took him by the neck and pulled him outside. Nidal
pushed the soldier's hands and shouted "What is going here?" The Israeli
commander interfered and told the soldier to leave him and asked: "Who is
living on the third floor?" "My brother and I" Nidal answered. The commander
said, "Call your brother." Said, Nidal's brother, was standing at the
entrance of the house and said: "I am here, what do you want?" The commander
replied: "Get everybody out of the house, bring them here quickly." Said
replied "they are just children and that they are in deep sleep." The
commander replied: "I said now." Said went up to his apartment. Twenty
soldiers entered the house, one group of soldiers followed Said and another
entered Nidal's apartment, while the others were watching and surrounding the
house. The commander was connected directly to someone in Rachel Tomb. The
one in Rachel Tomb's directed them to the floor, to the balcony and to the
doors and windows shot last Friday, 8 December and during which Nidal's son,
Miras, was shot and injured.
The soldiers searched Said's apartment and turned it upside down. Said asked
"What are you looking for?" The commander replied: "We need the gun machine!"
Said told him that there was no gun machine. The commander said to Said "Come
with me" and went with Said to the balcony where Miras got shot last Friday,
8 December. Meanwhile, soldiers noticed a closed wooden door and started
breaking it, Suheir, Said's wife, told them "I will bring you the key," but
before she had time to finish her sentence, the door was broken. This door
connects the two rooms in Nidal's apartment to Said's apartment.
The commander pointed to the bullets holes and asked Said: "Where do these
holes come from?" Said: "You are a soldier and can determine the direction…
you shot them." The commander replied: "OK, and why did we shot them ?" Said:
"Do not ask me ..ask yourself." He repeated the question and Said told him to
ask the soldier who shot the kids while they were playing. The commander
ordered Said to raise his clothes. They wanted to check if Said had been
shot…and then asked the family to keep quiet inside their apartment.
The commander then went to Nidal's apartment, which was also turned upside
down by the soldiers. He called Nidal to go up to the two bedrooms on the
third floor and asked: "Where do these holes come from?" Nidal replied: "You
shot the kids while they were playing on the balcony and inside their
bedrooms." He said "No" then he said "Well, why?" Nidal responded: "Ask
yourself or the soldier who shot them" and continued, "Are you the one who
was on the tower and shot the kids that day?" The commander was surprised and
shocked, and immediately replied: "NO..NO I was not there!" Nidal continued :
"What are you looking for?" The commander: "The gun." Nidal: "Why did you not
bring your well trained dogs to determine where the gun is?" The commander
looked to Nidal for a while, and said, "We do not need them…next time we will
bring them!"
The commander went down, and moved through the house, then asked Nidal: "Do
you have a camera?" Nidal replied: "Yes, and I took photos of the bullets
holes, and I will take photos of what you did tonight." The commander asked:
"For what purpose?" Nidal: "I am going to sue you, you will see the photos in
court."
The commander and two other soldiers saw Miras laying on his bed, he was awake
and his mother, Afaf was sitting next to him. Afaf moved his bed in the
living room because friends came to visit Miras, and also because she
discovered that it is the only place from which he can only be seen by one
military tower, making it relatively safer. The commander and the two
soldiers stood in front of Miras' bed for two minutes, watching him,
speechless. They left at 4.50 a.m.
Below is a follow-up relating to the shooting of Miras Al-Azza on Friday, 8
December. Soldiers came to Miras' house in the middle of the night on
Friday, 15 December (see the description of events below written by his
father, Nidal Al-Azza) apparently looking for the machine gun. Attached are
also photos of the damage caused to the house by the "search" of the
soldiers. Nidal will also soon send you photos of the bullet holes.
We were wondering if there is anything UNRWA or OCHA can do to protect this
family from such harassment and intimidation, especially the children? Has
the Israeli army provided you with any official explanation on the cause of
the shooting. Nidal is thinking to pursue the matter in court and would need
your help.
You can contact Nidal at: media@badil.org or 277-7086.
All the best,
Karine
Summary of latest event - Search of the house of Miras' family in the middle
of the night, Aida Camp.
by Nidal al-Azza
Friday, 15 December 2006
In the night of Thursday to Friday on 15 December, between 3:30 to 3:40am,
more than 50 Israeli soldiers surrounded Al-Azza family in Aida camp. They
knocked the door strongly and shouted loudly "open the door quickly …"
Nidal and his brother Said woke up. Nidal reached the door first and opened
it. Immediately, they asked him: "Whats your name?" He replied "Nidal Al-
Azza." One of the soldiers took him by the neck and pulled him outside. Nidal
pushed the soldier's hands and shouted "What is going here?" The Israeli
commander interfered and told the soldier to leave him and asked: "Who is
living on the third floor?" "My brother and I" Nidal answered. The commander
said, "Call your brother." Said, Nidal's brother, was standing at the
entrance of the house and said: "I am here, what do you want?" The commander
replied: "Get everybody out of the house, bring them here quickly." Said
replied "they are just children and that they are in deep sleep." The
commander replied: "I said now." Said went up to his apartment. Twenty
soldiers entered the house, one group of soldiers followed Said and another
entered Nidal's apartment, while the others were watching and surrounding the
house. The commander was connected directly to someone in Rachel Tomb. The
one in Rachel Tomb's directed them to the floor, to the balcony and to the
doors and windows shot last Friday, 8 December and during which Nidal's son,
Miras, was shot and injured.
The soldiers searched Said's apartment and turned it upside down. Said asked
"What are you looking for?" The commander replied: "We need the gun machine!"
Said told him that there was no gun machine. The commander said to Said "Come
with me" and went with Said to the balcony where Miras got shot last Friday,
8 December. Meanwhile, soldiers noticed a closed wooden door and started
breaking it, Suheir, Said's wife, told them "I will bring you the key," but
before she had time to finish her sentence, the door was broken. This door
connects the two rooms in Nidal's apartment to Said's apartment.
The commander pointed to the bullets holes and asked Said: "Where do these
holes come from?" Said: "You are a soldier and can determine the direction…
you shot them." The commander replied: "OK, and why did we shot them ?" Said:
"Do not ask me ..ask yourself." He repeated the question and Said told him to
ask the soldier who shot the kids while they were playing. The commander
ordered Said to raise his clothes. They wanted to check if Said had been
shot…and then asked the family to keep quiet inside their apartment.
The commander then went to Nidal's apartment, which was also turned upside
down by the soldiers. He called Nidal to go up to the two bedrooms on the
third floor and asked: "Where do these holes come from?" Nidal replied: "You
shot the kids while they were playing on the balcony and inside their
bedrooms." He said "No" then he said "Well, why?" Nidal responded: "Ask
yourself or the soldier who shot them" and continued, "Are you the one who
was on the tower and shot the kids that day?" The commander was surprised and
shocked, and immediately replied: "NO..NO I was not there!" Nidal continued :
"What are you looking for?" The commander: "The gun." Nidal: "Why did you not
bring your well trained dogs to determine where the gun is?" The commander
looked to Nidal for a while, and said, "We do not need them…next time we will
bring them!"
The commander went down, and moved through the house, then asked Nidal: "Do
you have a camera?" Nidal replied: "Yes, and I took photos of the bullets
holes, and I will take photos of what you did tonight." The commander asked:
"For what purpose?" Nidal: "I am going to sue you, you will see the photos in
court."
The commander and two other soldiers saw Miras laying on his bed, he was awake
and his mother, Afaf was sitting next to him. Afaf moved his bed in the
living room because friends came to visit Miras, and also because she
discovered that it is the only place from which he can only be seen by one
military tower, making it relatively safer. The commander and the two
soldiers stood in front of Miras' bed for two minutes, watching him,
speechless. They left at 4.50 a.m.
Sunday, December 10, 2006
the deadly watch tower- who is the soldier inside that shot?
10 decembre 2006.
voila ce qui s'est passé aucamp de Aida, ou je travaille, ou je joue avec les enfants; ou j'ai pris deja des centaines de photos. j'y connais les gens, les recoins de rue. les choses deviennent alors personnelles. je suis en france et j'ai reçu cette nouvelle comme un coup de couteau.
on me dira que ce n'est qu'un enfant de plus, et qu'en plus il n'est meme pas mort. on me dira de prendre de la distance, d'arreter de prendre les choses d'une maniere trop personnelle. l'enfant n'est pas mort mais le suivant le sera surment. mais doit-on s'habituer a de tels actes, doit-on accepter que des enfants soient blessés, tués, arretés? s'habituer et ne plus protester serait perdre notre humanité, je crie peut etre dans le vide mais que m'importe.
le fait reste qu'un soldat israelien, caché dans une tour militaire qui surveille le camp de refugies de Aida en permanence a visé et tiré CONSCIEMMENT sur un enfant palestinien.
ce vendredi, Miras; 12 ans, l'enfant de Nodal, que je connais de l'organisation BADIL, a été bléssé par balles alors qu'il jouait sur son balcon.
son crime? etre un enfant palestinien.
son meurtrier? un soldat israelien qui ne sera jamais inquieté ni condamné.
le contexte? une occupation militaire doublée d'une colonisation et d'un nettoyage ethnique a petit feu dont personne ne veut dire le nom.
je crie, je me joins aux cris des palestiniens que vous pouvez lire ci dessous; d'autres cris viendront, et on reprochera encore aux Palestiniens ( et à ces quelques illuminés internationaux) de n'avoir pas la decence de mourir en silence.
Miras Nidal Alazzah, is a 12 years old boy, living in Aida camp, facing the newly built racist wall, facing the military watch-tower within the segregation wall which composes part of the planned to be built synagogue at the eastern side of Aida camp. Miras was playing with his brother, sister and cousins on their balcony. Everything was calm, and suddenly around the mid-day of Friday 8th of December 2006, the soldier in the tower started shooting. 6 bullets hit the balcony. One of them penetrated Miras’s body, through the stomach and outside from the other side of his fragile body. He cried in pain. The shuttered glass peaces form the broken windows and fragments of the shooting injured his brother and his sister.
Actually, Miras in the hospital, with parts of his intestines removed. He wonders what wrong did he do apart playing as a normal child? What danger did that generate for those soldiers hiding in their high, arrogant, bullet-proof watch-towers. What crime against humanity has little Miras committed to be shut in cold blood like this. No comment from any political, military or official.
Night is long… may you have something to dream about. Hopefully, it would not be you son, brother, nephew or neighbor who would be in the same situation.
Below is a message from Miras’s Uncle. Read it well.
===============
Miras Nidal Alazzah, a 12 ans. C’est un garçon vivant au camp Aida, juste en face de nouveau mur de séparation raciste et le tour militaire de surveillance ou se construira la nouvelle synagogue. Miras était entrain de jouer avec son frère, sa sœur et ses cousins sur leur balcon. Tout était calme ce vendredi de 8 Décembre 2006, et le soldat dans le tour a commencé à tirer. Six balles ont frappe le balcon. Une des balles a pénétré le corps de Miras, traversant le estomac et passant dehors de l’autre cote. Il a crie. Le verre casse de la fenêtre et les fragments des balles ont blesses sa sœur et son frère.
Actuellement, Miras est a l’hôpital, une partie de ses intestins enlevée. Il se demande quel tort a-t-il fait a part jouer comme un enfant normal? Quel danger a-t-il provoqué pour ces soldats cachant dans leur hautain, arrogant, anti-balles tours de surveillance ? Quel crime a-t-il commit contre l’humanité pour qu’on lui tire dessus en sang froid ? Aucun commentaire d’aucun politicien, militaire ou officiel.
La nuit est longue… Que vous ayez quelque chose pour rêver…. Espérons que cela ne sera pas votre fils, frère, neveu ou voisin qui subira la même injustice.
Below is a message from Miras’s Uncle. Read it well.
AbdelFattah Abu-Srour, PhD
Director of Al-Rowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Center
____________________________________________
Al-Rowwad is an Independent Center for artistic, cultural, and theatre training for children in Aida Camp trying to provide a "safe" and healthy environment to help children creativity and discharge of stress in the war conditions they are forced to live in
Mobile: (972) 522 401 325- Telefax: +970 2 275 0030
email: alrowwadtheatre@yahoo.com
web site: http://alrowwad.virtualactivism.net
THE SHOOTING OF MIRAS
December 8, 2006
Aida Refugee Camp, Bethlehem, Palestinian West Bank
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sent: December 9, 2006 1:28 PM
Hi everyone,
I'm going to tell you a little story, and you tell me what's wrong with it, my friend.
Miras, a little 12 years Palestinian boy living in Aida Refugee Camp, is playing with his younger brother and sister, and his cousins on their balcony in their own house. His house is about 50 meters across from the Israeli tower guarding the Separation Wall. Miras and the kids started playing their favourite game "Jaysh (soldier in Arabic) and Arabs"…its like the “cowboys and Indians” game.
It was Friday morning, their day off from school, at 9:30 when they started playing inside the house and when it got warmer outside they went on to continue playing on the balcony.
At approximately 12:10 in the after noon the Israeli Soldier(s) opened fire toward the kids without warning or apparent provocation from anyone. Miras got shot in the stomach, the bullet hit him from the back and went through his intestines and got out from the other side while he was trying to push his little brother inside the house away from the shooting. Rowyed his little brother tripped and fell on the door-steps and got injured in his feet from the shattered windows which broke from the gun shots. He was lucky, so was Maysan (12yrs) and her sister Ansam (3yrs), also Miras's cousins. Maysan got fragment from the bullets in her stomach too. Ansam got hers in her tiny shoulder. But the shootings finally stopped and there was Miras laying on the floor bleeding and gasping for breathe.
Everyone in the neighbourhood got there, screaming, frantic, and angry. We got him to the hospital quickly, and there the doctors did an operation to Miras to save his life. So far he's doing fine, but he still has to be under close observation for next 48 hours. The surgeon said that Miras was lucky that the bullet was only 1cm away from the binal cord and only 2mm away from the main blood veins. He continued the bullet had curved inside the stomach away from the vital and major organs like the liver and kidneys and the bladder. So he said" Miras is very lucky kid".
Now Miras is still in the hospital recuperating, and many people come to see the lucky kid and wish him the best. All of us here wish him the best, but some people asked the question, and as a matter of fact they asked Miras:" What wrong did you do". Miras?
Miras said the same:” What wrong did I do?"...I was just playing.
So I'm asking you my friend what's wrong in this picture. Or is there wrong with it at all?
What did a young boy playing on his balcony with his cousins commit in crime to be shot at?
Facts: That day of the shooting every thing was normal as it can be... no demonstrations or stone throwing or any suspicious gathering of people. No shooting from the camp toward the Israelis or from any where else. Things are quite in the area for a long time. I'm talking about months.. no incidents of hostilities what so ever.
The kids had been playing on the balcony for some time before the shooting occured. So the soldier(s) who opened fire must've seen them and had determined that they are just kids playing in their house. The soldier can see them in his own naked eyes to make that determination or he can use the binoculars, I'm sure he has one, to also make sure that they are kids, just playing.
The soldier(s) in the tower are well protected in Bullet - proof shelter and there is no urgent need to make split-second decision to open fire on a kid with a' gun'. Supposing that gun is real. Even though the gun is just a toy and all the kids around her play with it.
Other fact even if the soldier, and lets suppose, he got panicked from the seen of a gun in the hand of someone on the balcony of a house. Does that give him the right to open fire randomly at the seen where he can see there are many small kids around him. It would be a stupid idea to think that he did the right thing by killing other innocent kids to get that one bad real gun man. That's if the senario seemed to him that way of, course.
FACT THERE WAS NO ADULTS WITH THE KIDS< NOT FOR A SECOND>
SO WHAT REALLY HAPPENED? WHAT WENT THROUGH THAT HATEFUL STUPID HEAD OF THAT BLOOD-THIRSTY-SUCKING "SOLDIER(S).
Some of you my friends know that Miras is my nephew and that all the kids in the story are also my nieces and nephews. But it got personal this time, you may say, but really it is beyond that if you want the truth. I'm emotionally hurt and angry... it’s true. But When I went with Miras to the hospital and I was listening to his screams of pain, something else got me more mad.
I saw two little girls in the emergency room on two separate beds crying of pain too. I asked some people about their story and they told me that they where in the car with their father when he had an accident. One of them was dead and the other had some serious injuries. I peaked again inside the room and there was the little one who passed away on her side and she had her two tiny hands underneath her head as if she is in deep sleep. No blood nothing. She had the most dark long beautiful her I ever seen for a five years old girl. But she was dead. Why she was in that final posture of her life? I don't know, but I know that I felt so emotional and I started crying. I wanted to hold that girl. Feel her hands and skin and her hair. I don't know I saw my girl in her. I pictured my daughter Dooda....I saw Miras.. Rowayd, Maysan, Suhaib...all of them. I started seeing the images of the kids in Gaza and Lebanon and Iraq ...Damn! The little Ghalia girl from Gaza and others who moved me so much that I went straight to internet to write about and to release these emotions out of me. I have wrote about the fear I used to have for my self, wife and my kids because of the location of my apartment across from the Israel watching tower. I came back again.
Its not just my family, or my apartment's location, or My country or my region, or the separation wall or just the Israelis. Its bigger than that... its the hatred within us.. the evilness...the racism....prejudice...dominancy game.. greed and jealousy. The kids are really innocent of these and we teach them our hatred and prejudices. So I can understand when some one kill another human being for some reason or the other, because we are polluted inside.
But when someone kills another kid, I just cant understand why. He or she could be the next saviour or the next leader for us out of this blood thirsty cycle we are in. So get up my friend wherever you are. Break the cycle, make a difference in your life and others. We are all tied up behind our selfish needs. The system is drugging us into chasing our basic needs of shelter and food, which seems good at the beginning, but when the majority are not getting even the crums of it, we become hooked up, and on and on into the cycle of doing anything to get the more the better you are.
WE all should work together individuals and institution and governments to make sure there are opportunities for every one. No body left out. America you are wrong if you think you are safe and well and the rest of the world are about to explode in poverty and in war because of injustices you may have some strings to it. Your way is not necessary the right way, but we may all come to sincerely believe that we all need to help each other. Let all the world be America , as equal but different and let all the suburbs of Los Angeles be all in neighborhoods and in all California . Let all cities be like Seattle and even better. And let all the planet earth be for all of us. So try to find a way to think about your family and your neighbors’ family and the things you can do for the neighborhood together and see how much we can change things from there. We are all neighbors her on earth and we need to take care of our selves.
For the sake of everyone and especially the kids. It's not hatred to America ... It's really disappointment and let down by the system that calls it self the leader of NEW-WORLD ORDER..... WHAT ORDER? Mr. President…you first...Blair next... and who else... Don't kill kids in my name, please!!!
If you my friends want to stand out... stand up. And If you want to stand out, break the cycle and stand up.
BEST REGARDS
AYED ALAZZA
voila ce qui s'est passé aucamp de Aida, ou je travaille, ou je joue avec les enfants; ou j'ai pris deja des centaines de photos. j'y connais les gens, les recoins de rue. les choses deviennent alors personnelles. je suis en france et j'ai reçu cette nouvelle comme un coup de couteau.
on me dira que ce n'est qu'un enfant de plus, et qu'en plus il n'est meme pas mort. on me dira de prendre de la distance, d'arreter de prendre les choses d'une maniere trop personnelle. l'enfant n'est pas mort mais le suivant le sera surment. mais doit-on s'habituer a de tels actes, doit-on accepter que des enfants soient blessés, tués, arretés? s'habituer et ne plus protester serait perdre notre humanité, je crie peut etre dans le vide mais que m'importe.
le fait reste qu'un soldat israelien, caché dans une tour militaire qui surveille le camp de refugies de Aida en permanence a visé et tiré CONSCIEMMENT sur un enfant palestinien.
ce vendredi, Miras; 12 ans, l'enfant de Nodal, que je connais de l'organisation BADIL, a été bléssé par balles alors qu'il jouait sur son balcon.
son crime? etre un enfant palestinien.
son meurtrier? un soldat israelien qui ne sera jamais inquieté ni condamné.
le contexte? une occupation militaire doublée d'une colonisation et d'un nettoyage ethnique a petit feu dont personne ne veut dire le nom.
je crie, je me joins aux cris des palestiniens que vous pouvez lire ci dessous; d'autres cris viendront, et on reprochera encore aux Palestiniens ( et à ces quelques illuminés internationaux) de n'avoir pas la decence de mourir en silence.
Miras Nidal Alazzah, is a 12 years old boy, living in Aida camp, facing the newly built racist wall, facing the military watch-tower within the segregation wall which composes part of the planned to be built synagogue at the eastern side of Aida camp. Miras was playing with his brother, sister and cousins on their balcony. Everything was calm, and suddenly around the mid-day of Friday 8th of December 2006, the soldier in the tower started shooting. 6 bullets hit the balcony. One of them penetrated Miras’s body, through the stomach and outside from the other side of his fragile body. He cried in pain. The shuttered glass peaces form the broken windows and fragments of the shooting injured his brother and his sister.
Actually, Miras in the hospital, with parts of his intestines removed. He wonders what wrong did he do apart playing as a normal child? What danger did that generate for those soldiers hiding in their high, arrogant, bullet-proof watch-towers. What crime against humanity has little Miras committed to be shut in cold blood like this. No comment from any political, military or official.
Night is long… may you have something to dream about. Hopefully, it would not be you son, brother, nephew or neighbor who would be in the same situation.
Below is a message from Miras’s Uncle. Read it well.
===============
Miras Nidal Alazzah, a 12 ans. C’est un garçon vivant au camp Aida, juste en face de nouveau mur de séparation raciste et le tour militaire de surveillance ou se construira la nouvelle synagogue. Miras était entrain de jouer avec son frère, sa sœur et ses cousins sur leur balcon. Tout était calme ce vendredi de 8 Décembre 2006, et le soldat dans le tour a commencé à tirer. Six balles ont frappe le balcon. Une des balles a pénétré le corps de Miras, traversant le estomac et passant dehors de l’autre cote. Il a crie. Le verre casse de la fenêtre et les fragments des balles ont blesses sa sœur et son frère.
Actuellement, Miras est a l’hôpital, une partie de ses intestins enlevée. Il se demande quel tort a-t-il fait a part jouer comme un enfant normal? Quel danger a-t-il provoqué pour ces soldats cachant dans leur hautain, arrogant, anti-balles tours de surveillance ? Quel crime a-t-il commit contre l’humanité pour qu’on lui tire dessus en sang froid ? Aucun commentaire d’aucun politicien, militaire ou officiel.
La nuit est longue… Que vous ayez quelque chose pour rêver…. Espérons que cela ne sera pas votre fils, frère, neveu ou voisin qui subira la même injustice.
Below is a message from Miras’s Uncle. Read it well.
AbdelFattah Abu-Srour, PhD
Director of Al-Rowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Center
____________________________________________
Al-Rowwad is an Independent Center for artistic, cultural, and theatre training for children in Aida Camp trying to provide a "safe" and healthy environment to help children creativity and discharge of stress in the war conditions they are forced to live in
Mobile: (972) 522 401 325- Telefax: +970 2 275 0030
email: alrowwadtheatre@yahoo.com
web site: http://alrowwad.virtualactivism.net
THE SHOOTING OF MIRAS
December 8, 2006
Aida Refugee Camp, Bethlehem, Palestinian West Bank
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sent: December 9, 2006 1:28 PM
Hi everyone,
I'm going to tell you a little story, and you tell me what's wrong with it, my friend.
Miras, a little 12 years Palestinian boy living in Aida Refugee Camp, is playing with his younger brother and sister, and his cousins on their balcony in their own house. His house is about 50 meters across from the Israeli tower guarding the Separation Wall. Miras and the kids started playing their favourite game "Jaysh (soldier in Arabic) and Arabs"…its like the “cowboys and Indians” game.
It was Friday morning, their day off from school, at 9:30 when they started playing inside the house and when it got warmer outside they went on to continue playing on the balcony.
At approximately 12:10 in the after noon the Israeli Soldier(s) opened fire toward the kids without warning or apparent provocation from anyone. Miras got shot in the stomach, the bullet hit him from the back and went through his intestines and got out from the other side while he was trying to push his little brother inside the house away from the shooting. Rowyed his little brother tripped and fell on the door-steps and got injured in his feet from the shattered windows which broke from the gun shots. He was lucky, so was Maysan (12yrs) and her sister Ansam (3yrs), also Miras's cousins. Maysan got fragment from the bullets in her stomach too. Ansam got hers in her tiny shoulder. But the shootings finally stopped and there was Miras laying on the floor bleeding and gasping for breathe.
Everyone in the neighbourhood got there, screaming, frantic, and angry. We got him to the hospital quickly, and there the doctors did an operation to Miras to save his life. So far he's doing fine, but he still has to be under close observation for next 48 hours. The surgeon said that Miras was lucky that the bullet was only 1cm away from the binal cord and only 2mm away from the main blood veins. He continued the bullet had curved inside the stomach away from the vital and major organs like the liver and kidneys and the bladder. So he said" Miras is very lucky kid".
Now Miras is still in the hospital recuperating, and many people come to see the lucky kid and wish him the best. All of us here wish him the best, but some people asked the question, and as a matter of fact they asked Miras:" What wrong did you do". Miras?
Miras said the same:” What wrong did I do?"...I was just playing.
So I'm asking you my friend what's wrong in this picture. Or is there wrong with it at all?
What did a young boy playing on his balcony with his cousins commit in crime to be shot at?
Facts: That day of the shooting every thing was normal as it can be... no demonstrations or stone throwing or any suspicious gathering of people. No shooting from the camp toward the Israelis or from any where else. Things are quite in the area for a long time. I'm talking about months.. no incidents of hostilities what so ever.
The kids had been playing on the balcony for some time before the shooting occured. So the soldier(s) who opened fire must've seen them and had determined that they are just kids playing in their house. The soldier can see them in his own naked eyes to make that determination or he can use the binoculars, I'm sure he has one, to also make sure that they are kids, just playing.
The soldier(s) in the tower are well protected in Bullet - proof shelter and there is no urgent need to make split-second decision to open fire on a kid with a' gun'. Supposing that gun is real. Even though the gun is just a toy and all the kids around her play with it.
Other fact even if the soldier, and lets suppose, he got panicked from the seen of a gun in the hand of someone on the balcony of a house. Does that give him the right to open fire randomly at the seen where he can see there are many small kids around him. It would be a stupid idea to think that he did the right thing by killing other innocent kids to get that one bad real gun man. That's if the senario seemed to him that way of, course.
FACT THERE WAS NO ADULTS WITH THE KIDS< NOT FOR A SECOND>
SO WHAT REALLY HAPPENED? WHAT WENT THROUGH THAT HATEFUL STUPID HEAD OF THAT BLOOD-THIRSTY-SUCKING "SOLDIER(S).
Some of you my friends know that Miras is my nephew and that all the kids in the story are also my nieces and nephews. But it got personal this time, you may say, but really it is beyond that if you want the truth. I'm emotionally hurt and angry... it’s true. But When I went with Miras to the hospital and I was listening to his screams of pain, something else got me more mad.
I saw two little girls in the emergency room on two separate beds crying of pain too. I asked some people about their story and they told me that they where in the car with their father when he had an accident. One of them was dead and the other had some serious injuries. I peaked again inside the room and there was the little one who passed away on her side and she had her two tiny hands underneath her head as if she is in deep sleep. No blood nothing. She had the most dark long beautiful her I ever seen for a five years old girl. But she was dead. Why she was in that final posture of her life? I don't know, but I know that I felt so emotional and I started crying. I wanted to hold that girl. Feel her hands and skin and her hair. I don't know I saw my girl in her. I pictured my daughter Dooda....I saw Miras.. Rowayd, Maysan, Suhaib...all of them. I started seeing the images of the kids in Gaza and Lebanon and Iraq ...Damn! The little Ghalia girl from Gaza and others who moved me so much that I went straight to internet to write about and to release these emotions out of me. I have wrote about the fear I used to have for my self, wife and my kids because of the location of my apartment across from the Israel watching tower. I came back again.
Its not just my family, or my apartment's location, or My country or my region, or the separation wall or just the Israelis. Its bigger than that... its the hatred within us.. the evilness...the racism....prejudice...dominancy game.. greed and jealousy. The kids are really innocent of these and we teach them our hatred and prejudices. So I can understand when some one kill another human being for some reason or the other, because we are polluted inside.
But when someone kills another kid, I just cant understand why. He or she could be the next saviour or the next leader for us out of this blood thirsty cycle we are in. So get up my friend wherever you are. Break the cycle, make a difference in your life and others. We are all tied up behind our selfish needs. The system is drugging us into chasing our basic needs of shelter and food, which seems good at the beginning, but when the majority are not getting even the crums of it, we become hooked up, and on and on into the cycle of doing anything to get the more the better you are.
WE all should work together individuals and institution and governments to make sure there are opportunities for every one. No body left out. America you are wrong if you think you are safe and well and the rest of the world are about to explode in poverty and in war because of injustices you may have some strings to it. Your way is not necessary the right way, but we may all come to sincerely believe that we all need to help each other. Let all the world be America , as equal but different and let all the suburbs of Los Angeles be all in neighborhoods and in all California . Let all cities be like Seattle and even better. And let all the planet earth be for all of us. So try to find a way to think about your family and your neighbors’ family and the things you can do for the neighborhood together and see how much we can change things from there. We are all neighbors her on earth and we need to take care of our selves.
For the sake of everyone and especially the kids. It's not hatred to America ... It's really disappointment and let down by the system that calls it self the leader of NEW-WORLD ORDER..... WHAT ORDER? Mr. President…you first...Blair next... and who else... Don't kill kids in my name, please!!!
If you my friends want to stand out... stand up. And If you want to stand out, break the cycle and stand up.
BEST REGARDS
AYED ALAZZA