Israeli sniper using live ammunition – Ruger rifle with 0.22 mm calibre bullets – against Palestinian stone throwers. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

By Mel Frykberg
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Mar 27 2015 (IPS)

A Palestinian youth lost his fight for life this week after lying critically injured in Ramallah Hospital for days after Israeli soldiers used live ammunition as a method of crowd control against stone-throwing Palestinians near a Palestinian refugee camp.

“Ali Safi had critical injuries to his kidneys, spinal cord, lungs and spleen,” Dr Sami Naghli, who runs Jelazon refugee camp’s medical relief services, told IPS.

Seventeen-year-old Safi was shot last week by an Israeli sniper armed with a Ruger rifle during clashes between Palestinian youngsters and Israeli soldiers.

The bullet which hit him was a 0.22 inch calibre bullet, which is considered less lethal than ordinary bullets of 5.56 mm calibre.“Many of the wounded have been shot at close range and it appears as if the soldiers are shooting to kill. In my five years as a surgeon, the situation has been getting progressively worse, especially lately” – orthopaedic surgeon Dr Ahmed Barakat

There has been a recent increase in the use of this kind of bullet against Palestinian demonstrators by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) despite disagreement within the Israeli military about the use of this controversial weapon for riot control when the lives of Israeli soldiers are not endangered.

The head of Israel’s security department in the Operations Directorate stated in 2001 that the Ruger could not be considered a non-lethal weapon and could only be used in circumstances which justified the use of live fire.

Due to the large number of Palestinians injured and killed by 0.22 bullets, the use of this ammunition was suspended during the second Intifada, or uprising, from 2001 to 2008.

However, they are once again being used by the Israelis and the number of Palestinians seriously injured by them is growing, with at least two deaths in the last several months.

“Recent months have seen a dramatic rise in Israeli security forces’ use of live 0.22 inch calibre bullets. The firing of this ammunition is an almost weekly occurrence in the West Bank in sites of protests and clashes,” reported Israeli rights group B’tselem in January.

“Most of those injured have been young Palestinians, including minors. Yet, in the last two months, one Palestinian woman, at least three photographers, and a foreign national who was taking part in a demonstration were also hit by these bullets,” said B’tselem.

The humanitarian organisation has also said it witnessed cases of Israeli soldiers provoking clashes in order to fire live ammunition at protesters.

The reintroduction of this controversial weapon prompted B’tselem to complain to Israel’s Military Attorney General (MAG), who responded confirming that “the Ruger and similar means are not classified by the IDF as means for dispersing demonstrations or public disturbances.”

Dr Naghli told IPS that the Israeli soldiers are also using a kind of bullet which fragments on impact, causing severe trauma and damage to bones, organs and nerves, although he could not confirm if this was a 0.22 or another type.

“During the last three months there have been over 40 wounded from these types of gunshots,” said Naghli.

Over the last few weeks, IPS has witnessed Israeli snipers firing repeatedly at Palestinians during several clashes in the West Bank when stones thrown landed at a distance away from the soldiers presenting no danger.

IPS also visited some of the wounded in Ramallah Hospital and spoke to orthopaedic surgeon Dr Ahmed Barakat who was treating them.

“Many of the wounded have been shot at close range and it appears as if the soldiers are shooting to kill. In my five years as a surgeon, the situation has been getting progressively worse, especially lately,” Dr Barakat told IPS.

In a related development, the IDF has also temporarily suspended the use of attack dogs when arresting Palestinians, most accused of stone-throwing.

This follows a video, which went viral and caused an outcry, of 16-year-old Hamzeh Abu Hashem, 16, of Beit Ummar near Hebron in the southern West Bank, being savaged by two dogs as soldiers arrest him.

A subsequent IDF investigation found that while the use of dogs in confrontations “could be justified, in the case in question, the youth could have been arrested using other means.” Abu Hashem has been incarcerated since the incident.

Meanwhile, torture of Palestinians in detention by Israeli security services has been on the rise since the second half of 2014, according to the Public Committee Against Torture (PCAT) in Israel, an attorney representing Palestinian prisoners and Israel’s left-leaning Haaretz daily.

“In years past there were a few rare cases of torture. But something has changed,” the attorney told Haaretz.

In all of 2014, 23 Palestinians filed a number of complaints of torture by the Shin Bet (Israel’s domestic intelligence agency).

Until 1999, thousands of Palestinian prisoners were tortured every year. PCAT estimates that most Palestinians questioned had experienced at least one kind of torture.

In September 1999, following a petition to the High Court of Justice, the court prohibited the systematic use of torture, but left a small opening for interrogators

This opening applied to cases known as “ticking time bombs” where the use of force is permitted to obtain crucial information.

However, critics have pointed out that what constitutes a “ticking time bomb” is open to interpretation as well as the fact that Palestinian prisoners who have been tortured have sometimes given false information just to stop the torture.

Edited by Phil Harris    

Israel's proposed project ‘E1’ would sever occupied East Jerusalem from the West Bank. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS

By Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, Dec 20 2012 (IPS)

While the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip hasn’t been so quiet for the past two decades, it’s now the turn of the occupied West Bank to show signs of eruption.

As Hamas tries to export its resistance to the Palestinian Authority (PA) territories, President Mahmoud Abbas’ repeated warnings of a third, yet “peaceful”, Intifada in the absence of peace talks might finally materialise.

Twenty-five years ago this month, Hamas was founded in Gaza while the first Intifada (1987 to 1991) against the Israeli occupation erupted. The uprising was dubbed, retrospectively, the “stones Intifada” for it contrasted with the second “armed” Intifada (2000 to 2005).

In commemoration of the anniversary, rallies were organised in the West Bank on Friday by the Islamist movement and, a first since Hamas overthrew the PA in Gaza in 2007, authorised by Abbas.

Hamas had celebrated the anniversary of its creation in Gaza a week earlier, greeting Khaled Meshal’s first-time visit to the embattled strip of land with grand rallies.

Abbas’s Fatah party dignitaries in Gaza were allowed to welcome the head of the Hamas politburo. And in the wake of Israel’s eight-day military operation on Hamas in Gaza, Abbas ordered the release of Hamas activists imprisoned in PA jails.

So would these commemorations signal a thaw in relations between the competitive nationalist and Islamist groups?

Not necessarily.

On the face of it, add Israel’s onslaught on Hamas and Hamas’s self-declared victory to Abbas’s United Nations statehood triumph, and the competing national and Islamist groups, now on equal popularity footing, would seem to want to mend their five-year schism.

But when on Friday thousands of Hamas supporters assembled in the main cities of the West Bank, displaying, in a sea of green Islamic flags adorned with Quran inscriptions, the true potency of the Islamic Resistance Movement in PA-administered territories, they were contained by Abbas’ security forces.

In Hebron, demonstrators attempted to cross the Israeli-controlled ‘H1’ sector of the divided city to confront Israeli troops stationed there. Instead, they ended up battling Palestinian policemen in the Palestinian-administered ‘H2’ sector.

Yet, the Israeli defence establishment fears that Palestinians are on the brink of another Intifada in the West Bank, not just against Israel’s occupation and settlement policy but for de facto (in addition to de jure) independence of their upgraded state – this, despite the fact that Abbas’s modus operandi has proven fundamentally non-violent.

After all, Abbas outspokenly criticised the violence of the second Intifada, which, in effect, ended in 2005 when he was elected president. Since then, he’s been steadily and convincingly opposing armed resistance by Palestinian guerrillas.

Actually, security cooperation between Israel and the PA was reinforced (with little U.S. prodding) to unmitigated heights – to the extent that for the past seven years, the West Bank has been remarkably peaceful – until the last two weeks.

Why then would Abbas tolerate, even support, a new upheaval, or at least ride on its wave?

The U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) recognition of Palestine as “non-member observer state” last month enthused his West Bank constituency. But the next day, the elation turned to frustration and anger, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the UNGA vote by boosting Israel’s settlement enterprise.

His cabinet approved the construction of 3,000 housing units and furthered the planning procedures for thousands of additional units in and around East Jerusalem, especially in an area designated as ‘E1’.

If implemented, project ‘E1’ would sever occupied East Jerusalem from the West Bank, and thus would make the establishment of the capital of the future Palestinian state in the holy city virtually impossible.

That’s when the Israeli military comes into play.

Signs of eruption had hardly been noticeable. Weekly and largely peaceful demonstrations against Israel’s notorious separation wall, which dissects chunks of the West Bank, were staged as usual in the villages of Ni’lin, Bi’lin and Kfar Qaddoum.

But the Israeli military top brass paid attention to the changes on the ground.

Two Palestinians were killed in the West Bank while protesting the Israeli military operation. In Hebron, a soldier was slapped by a Palestinian security officer. And in Kfar Qaddoum this time, troops chose to run away from Palestinian stone throwers.

Filmed by Palestinian activists, the Kfar Qaddoum incident went viral on the web and, as a result, in the Israeli media.

There were those who, in fear of losing their military’s deterrence, advocated an uncompromising ‘iron fist’ policy against Palestinian demonstrators; other commentators, a minority, praised the Israel Defence Forces’ ‘soft glove’ policy for their “heroic restraint”.

“It’s better to accept embarrassment and criticism than to cause fatalities, to risk (…) an international trial and to inflict diplomatic damage. Restraint is power; restraint in the presence of cameras is also common sense,” stated an editorial in the liberal daily Haaretz in reaction to the “humiliating” YouTube clips.

The Israeli media spill-over also focused on the declaration attributed to “a high-rank Israeli officer”. “It’s our duty,” he declared, “to act proportionately and fire a weapon only as last resort. We don’t want to hurt non-combatants and fire indiscriminately.”

Yet, despite the intended rules of engagement, a Palestinian teenager was killed on Wednesday by a female soldier from the paramilitary Border Police unit at a checkpoint near Hebron.

The Israeli military fear the risk that they might lose control, or that Abbas might lose ground.

The first Intifada was a popular uprising, which the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, then in exile in Tunis under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, joined belatedly. When Arafat tried to “ride” the second Intifada “tiger”, he failed.

Two years after the start of the “Arab Spring”, the risk of a third Palestinian uprising is precisely what Abbas might want Israelis to believe – if only to deter Netanyahu from adopting more “punitive” measures, and to try to influence Israeli public opinion ahead of the January general elections that, after a two-and-a-half-year hiatus, peace talks must be resumed.

A family member expressing outrage outside the house of the slain Muhammed Salaymi (17). A notice on the door declares this to be the home of a martyr. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

By Mel Frykberg
HEBRON, Occupied West Bank, Dec 19 2012 (IPS)

A new Palestinian group called the National Union Battalions (NUB), comprising Palestinians from across the political spectrum, has called for a third Palestinian uprising or Intifada. Simultaneously, Israeli intelligence is warning that conditions on the ground in the West Bank are ripe for another Palestinian revolt.

These warnings come as protests and clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian youths broke out across cities and towns in the West Bank over the weekend, sparked by 17-year-old Muhammad Salayma’s untimely death at the hands of an Israeli border guard in Hebron.

A video distributed over the weekend by NUB members from Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) announced the establishment of their organisation as a means of consolidating the struggle against Israel.

While the group stressed its support for the United Nation’s recognition of Palestine as a non-member observer state, it said it would fight to recover “all of Palestine – from the sea to the river”.

“This is the beginning of a third Palestinian Intifada, which is erupting from the heart of Hebron and will spread to all of Palestine,” according to the video.

The members further threatened to kidnap Israeli soldiers if the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) didn’t stop arresting Palestinians, adding that if Israel continued to kill Palestinians with impunity, the group would retaliate in kind.

The Battalions’ demands include removing all IDF checkpoints in the West Bank, the release of all Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, an Israeli withdrawal from all occupied Palestinian land, and the transfer of all tax revenues Israel has been withholding from the Palestinian Authority (PA) since the U.N. voted on upgrading the Palestinians’ status.

The NUB also demands the opening of all border crossings, and the supply of water and electricity to the besieged Gaza Strip.

The group released their statement on Friday, the day following the fatal shooting of Salayma, after Israeli soldiers claimed he had threatened them with a plastic gun. However, when IPS spoke to members of the Salayma family a very different picture emerged.

“I doubt Muhammad had any plastic gun. I believe the Israelis planted that gun near him in the aftermath of the shooting,” the dead youth’s uncle Muhammad Salayma Sr., a policeman with the PA, told IPS.

“It was his birthday and he had gone out to buy a celebratory birthday cake. To get to the shop he had to pass through an Israeli military checkpoint and then pass through it again when returning home. If he had a replica gun on him the x-ray machine would have detected this,” Salayma told IPS.

“He was a happy and intelligent student, and represented Palestine’s wrestling team in France. He was returning home with his birthday cake and we are meant to believe that he suddenly tried to overpower a group of heavily-armed and well trained Israeli soldiers with a plastic gun? He wouldn’t have been that stupid,” Nasim Salayma (22), a cousin of the late Muhammad Salayma, told IPS.

Israeli, Palestinian and international human rights organisations have documented numerous cases over the years where Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli soldiers under highly disputed circumstances.

What is undisputed, however, is the mass anger this latest killing has sparked – hundreds of Palestinian youths took to the streets in Hebron on Thursday to vent their anger against Israeli troops, throwing stones and burning tyres. Dozens were injured in the subsequent clashes, some seriously, by live ammunition, rubber bullets and teargas. The protests then spread to other West Bank towns and cities.

IPS witnessed further clashes in Hebron the following day as a large rally of Hamas supporters marked the 25^th anniversary of the organisation’s establishment.

This was the first time in years that the PA has allowed Hamas rallies to take place in the West Bank; it follows recent steps towards rapprochement between Hamas and the PA-affiliated Fatah, Palestine’s two main political factions and, hitherto, staunch enemies.

The baby steps towards unity follow Hamas’ growing political strength in the wake of the most recent Gaza war, which united Palestinians from all factions.  Security forces from both sides have also drastically reduced the number of arrests of opposition members.

As a result, Hamas’ strength in the West Bank is growing. This, coupled with Israel’s forthcoming transfer of a number of Hamas prisoners from Gaza to the West Bank, will further consolidate the Islamist organisation’s presence here.

Also preparing the ground for another uprising against Israel’s occupation is the possible collapse or dissolution of the cash-strapped PA as Israel continues to withhold more than one hundred million Palestinian tax dollars.

The PA is a source of livelihood for several hundred thousand Palestinians and their dependents, leading experts to predict that mass unemployment, which will surely arise from the dissolution of the PA, will make Palestinians more desperate.

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are frozen. Palestinian outrage has been aggravated by the increase in Israeli settler attacks and the continued expropriation of Palestinian land.  Furthermore, following growing international recognition, Palestinian dreams of statehood have been emboldened.

Meanwhile, the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, says widespread unrest in the area could foster the development of the kind of infrastructure that could potentially support a third Intifada, according to Israeli media reports.