Luisa Morgantini, EU Parliament, on wave of Israeli kidnappings and killings in the West Bank

Palestine: Tel Aviv's collective punishments
Stories by witnesses from the village of Beit Ummar.
By Luisa Morgantini, Vice-President of the European Parliament.

Published in Liberazione, Italian newspaper on 19th February 2008

Friday 15th February: after three days in a row of siege and curfew, Israeli tanks eventually leave and water and electricity can be restored in Beit Ummar, a tiny village in the south of the West Bank, a few kilometres from Hebron, where some 10 thousand Palestinians live.

Israeli tanks together with Shin Bet agents - some 30 vehicles and bulldozers, according to eyewitnesses - entered the village on Wednesday the 13th at about one o'clock in the morning; soldiers carried out house to house searches rounding up a number of young civilian men aged between 18 and 25, destroying buildings, infrastructure and shops, as was also confirmed by the Christian Peacemaker Teams: "Soldiers surrounded the mosque, preventing movement of people and cars but also of medicines and ambulances" they told Maanam News.

"It was nothing less than a collective punishment, perpetuated against young boys and men who were brought to a schoolyard and repeatedly beaten up. Almost 85 of them were kept for hours outside, in the cold at below-zero temperatures" Ali Abu Awwad told us by telephone with despair and helplessness in his voice. He is a 35-year-old Palestinian Ghandian-pacifist who together with an Israeli citizen, Elik El Hanan, tells us and the world about their need for peace and justice.

Both have mourned a family bereavement caused by the conflict: Ali lost one of his brothers, shot cold-bloodedly by an Israeli soldier at a check point; Elik lost his sister, killed in a kamikaze attack in 1997. Today they are both activists of the Parents Circle, a Forum counting more than 500 Israeli and Palestinian families who, despite
having lost some of their loved ones, have been spreading, for over 12 years, a very powerful message: "If we, those who have paid the highest price, keep talking about peace then it means that everyone can do it" says Ali at the end of "Mothers", Barbara Cupisti's documentary - presented last September at the Venice Film Festival - on the stories of 15 Israeli and Palestinian mothers whose children have been killed in the conflict.

Ali is a cofounder of Al Tariq (The Way), a Palestinian movement bringing together numerous Palestinian associations engaged in a daily battle for the recognition of a free Palestinian state, for the end of the military occupation, against every sort of violence and against the logic of contraposition. We also learned from him that some leaflets were left by the Israeli army in Beit Ummar that had occupied some houses in the village making them its headquarters: "You have not been able to teach your kids not to throw stones, now we will take care of that!" was written on those leaflets.

Moreover, during the invasion, the army of occupation demolished houses and shops, destroyed water and sewerage pipes, seized computers, cell phones and documents without providing any kind of explanation. In addition 25 people were captured who, up to now, have not been released. We do not know where these people are being held exactly; a number of minors are among them like 15-year-old Muntaser Fakhri Ikhlayel and his cousin Adam Hasan Ikhlayel, 16, both arrested on Wednesday night in Beit Unmar as was Youssef Hassan Abarneh, who is a local leader of Al Fatah and another cofounder of Al Tariq. These latest arrests are in addition to more than 11 thousand Palestinian political prisoners currently kept in Israeli prisons, in Israel as well as in the occupied territories.

Over the last weeks many demonstrations have been held in Beit Ummar, with people protesting against the local government run by Hamas. It cannot be a coincidence that among the 25 people arrested there are many Fatah leaders, who were given the key of the Municipality by the Hamas government as a sign of distension with the protesters.

In the meantime, closures, raids and invasions are ongoing in Gaza and in the West Bank: on Wednesday alone, at least 60 people were captured in the West Bank and on the 15th of February an elderly Palestinian woman died from an heart attack because she was unable to reach the hospital on time as her husband, Mahmoud Yussef Qab, was denied permission to pass through a check point by Israeli soldiers.

According to Palestine Monitor, since the Annapolis conference on the 28th of November, Israeli raids have increased of 220%, 178 Palestinians have been killed, including 3 children and some 617 people have been injured. All this has happened without a single protest from the International Community (and they do not even fire Kassam rockets from Beit Unmar...).

It seems clear that the Israeli government is unable or unwilling to stop its militaristic, colonial and land-conquering attitude as demonstrated by its policy of settlements expansion within the Palestinian territories. It seems to want to keep the Middle East in a situation of never-ending conflict, as demonstrated by the assassination of the Hezbollah leader, Imad Mughniyeh, in Damascus.

They kill and they destroy and they are convinced that they deserve to be loved and understood but in order to be loved they themselves have to love and respect others. This does not seem to be the case either of the Israeli government or of the Israeli army. But we should not despair because there are many people in Israel, like Elik, who try to defend the future of their country by demonstrating side by side with the Palestinians against the Wall in Bi'lin or at the Eretz pass in Gaza and fiercely denouncing that this policy of military occupation and colonial expansion will only strengthen extremist and fundamentalist forces in both sides.