Palestine in Pictures: May 2022
We always look forward to posting this monthly update of Palestine, which includes so many amazing photos.
Palestine in Pictures
Palestinians enjoy the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of Ramadan in Gaza City, 4 May.
Ashraf AmraAPA images
A view of Deir al-Balah refugee camp, central Gaza, on the 74th anniversary of the Nakba, the “catastrophe” of Israel’s establishment in 1948, on 15 May.
Ashraf AmraAPA images
A woman raises a Palestinian flag at the Damascus Gate to Jerusalem’s Old City during the annual Israeli ultranationalist Flag March on 29 May.
Oren ZivActiveStills
Brutality and complicity have sustained this military occupation for 55 years
Nancy Murray reports about the recent trip she co-led with Eyewitness Palestine:
Brutality and complicity have sustained this military occupation for 55 years
We heard about the killing of the prominent Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh shortly before our meeting with Sahar Francis, the head of Addameer, the Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association. Sahar had been a close friend of the Al Jazeera journalist for two decades.
The tragic news of Abu Akleh being gunned down by what sounds like a sniper’s bullet to the neck while she was covering the latest Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp wearing a helmet and protective vest bearing the word PRESS is another reminder of how little Palestinian life matters to the military occupiers of this captive land.
Addameer is one of the six well-known human rights organizations given a ‘terrorist’ designation by Israel late last year in an effort to silence the most widely respected voices of Palestinian civil society, even as it has snuffed out the lives of over 40 Palestinian journalists since 2000 who had been attempting to let the world know what was happening here.
“When we try to use the international mechanisms like going to the International Criminal Court and submittig reports to UN bodies about torture and other human rights violations we are called a terrorist organization,” Sahar told us. “But we believe it cannot last forever, and one day this settler colonial regime will end.”
We heard about the grim conditions endured by 4,500 Palestinian political prisoners, 160 of whom are children, and about Israel’s use of indefinite imprisonment without charges or trial, known as ‘administrative detention.’ Currently there are 130 Palestinians detained indefinitely, on ‘evidence’ they can neither see nor challenge in a court.
Sahar talked about the violence meted out by the military during middle-of-the-night raids on homes, and the physical and psychological torture inflicted on prisoners during interrogation when they can be held in solitary confinement for 60 days before seeing a lawyer. She told us that although torture had been outlawed by the Israeli High Court in 1999 except in ‘ticking bomb’ scenarios, that loophole is now expanding and used widely in cases where there is no potential threat. This is happening despite the fact that Israel is a member of the Convention Against Torture.
She described the circle of complicity of doctors, the military courts, prosecutors and the Ministry of Health, all of which support the oppression of Palestinians and make no attempt to document or properly investigate torture cases, even when such treatment leads to a death. “Even in those rare cases when Addameer succeeds in pressuring for a proper investigation, at the end of the day, Israel finds a way around all efforts at holding it accountable.”
We heard about the terrible health conditions in prisons, the fact that prisoners cannot have phone calls with their families for ‘security’ reasons, the confiscation of books when prisoners try to educate themselves, and the refusal of Israel to allow 66-year-old Karim Younis to be present for a few hours at the funeral of his mother. Younis, who has been incarcerated for 40 years, was one of the prisoners who was supposed to have been released in the post-Oslo period, but the Israeli government failed to do it.
Despite the fact that Sahar holds a US visa that is valid for another year, the US last week banned her from transiting the country to attend the World Social Forum in Mexico.
No sooner had our meeting ended than we heard that Israeli soldiers had just shot a live bullet into the heart of 18-year-old Thayer Khalil Yazouri not far from where we were. They claim he was throwing stones, which now merits a death sentence.
This is what the Apartheid Occupation looks like.
The May 2022 Eyewitness Palestine delegation in Jerusalem.
Sheikh Jarrah in the Crosshairs
Nancy Murray reports about the recent trip she co-led with Eyewitness Palestine:
Sheikh Jarrah in the crosshairs
For decades, dozens of Palestinian families in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah have faced displacement after Jewish settler organizations, backed by funding from the US, went to court to have them expelled from their homes. The settlers claimed that Jews were the rightful owners of houses that had been given to Palestinian refugees by the Kingdom of Jordan when the area was under a Jordanian mandate before the 1967 war.
Last year, attempts to evict some of the remaining 38 families in Sheikh Jarrah led to vigorous protests on the part of residents and solidarity activists, which broke through the general media silence on the subject of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
This year, the struggle continues. We heard about it from Ibrahim Salem, who is awaiting a ruling in the next ten days about whether he and his mother Fatima will be forcibly evicted. They have been living in their house since 1952, and Ibrahim and his five sisters and three brothers were born there.
The Salem family has been fighting to stay in their home since the late 1980s, when settlers claimed they had bought the house from its “rightful owner.” They have never been shown a document of sale and don’t know who this alleged owner is.
For the last two decades, they have been in court, paying some $10,000 in court fees to be able to stay in their home. Earlier this year, Ibrahim’s elderly mother was pepper sprayed and he was beaten by settlers, who fenced off part of their land and constantly harass them. The Member of the Knesset Itamar-Ben Gvir, a disciple of the late far rightist Meir Kahane, set up a tent with a table in front of their house, and called it his new Knesset office. It soon became the focal point for violent settler demonstrations.
We heard about these demonstrations from Mohammed Abu Al-Humus, a well known Palestinian activist who set up his own tent near Gvir’s and has spent his days there during the last two months. Al-Humus had a broken arm and was limping badly from being hit in the leg with a rubber bullet during the demonstrations at the Al Aqsa mosque compound during Ramadan.
He told us that the army and settlers took away his tent 11 times, but the community helped him put up a new tent every time. He said that the ethnic cleansing of Sheikh Jarrah is part of Israel’s plan to create one continuous settlement from West Jerusalem through East Jerusalem to the big settlement city of Maale Adumim, which is almost at the border with Jordan.
There are, he said, six consulates located in the Sheikh Jarrah area which have been ordered by the European Union not to get involved. The Quartet (the US, Russia, EU and UN) which is supposed to guide the so-called peace process is also headquartered in the area and is saying nothing publicly.
It will take international pressure, he told us, to stop the evictions. But now with all eyes on Ukraine, there is no longer much media attention on what is happening in Sheikh Jarrah. Why does the US think Ukrainians deserve the protection of international law but Palestinians do not?
Nancy Murray
Ibrahim Salem (at left) and Mohammed Abu al-Humus in Sheikh Jarrah