Hanukkah trip in the heart of the Palestinian village

Tags:

Settlers, Settlements

Updates during Corona

Observers:

elephone Report to Irit Sguli15.12.2020 Translation: Bracha Ben-Avraham

Dec-15-2020

Morning

Tourists and settlers travel in the area of the village of Yassuf

The mayor of Yasuf telephoned and told me that this morning at 10:30 more than 60 settlers, accompanied by guests and soldiers, entered the fields belonging to farmers from Yasuf They came down from the aggressive settlement of Tapuach. Since the Palestinians did not receive any warning that the Jews were engaging in hikes during the Chanukah holiday, they began throwing stones at them. The soldiers responded with gunfire. No one was injured. The settlers threw rocks down a well, and damaged a 500-year-old olive tree, and a stone wall.

The mayor of the village called the Palestinian District Coordination and Liaison Office and was told that this was a “Chanukah hike”. He asked if they had been notified beforehand and the District Coordination and Liaison Office answered that they had not.

Early warning would have eliminated the conflict.

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’