9 May 05

On 29 March 2005, while working in his olive grove, 88-year-old Muhammad Kashu’a, a resident of ‘Elar, heard somebody calling to him. “I turned around and saw a group of about twelve soldiers,” he told B’Tselem. One of the soldiers asked Kashu'a what he was doing there. “I told him that I was working my land, removing the weeds…. He told me that it was not olive-picking season, and again asked why I was there. I replied that it was my land and that I had come to cultivate it. He said that I was lying, and that I had come to give food to people on Israel’s wanted list. I told him that I did not know any wanted persons, that I was ninety years old, and that I don’t know anybody [who is wanted]…

“He humiliated me again, saying: ‘You old men are liars.’ I told him that I was ninety years old and have never lied to anyone, Jew or Arab… Then he asked me if I had an ID card… I gave him the ID, he looked at it and said: ‘You are ninety, but you are impudent…’ Then he punched me in the chest.

“I told him, ‘Don’t hit me, I am sick and old. I can’t withstand a beating. Why are you hitting me? Am I so threatening to you, that you have to assault me?’ I told him that I wanted to speak to the officer in charge… The soldier I spoke to and two other soldiers knocked me to the ground. They kicked me in the back and beat me.

"I asked them why they were beating an old man. The law all over the world is that it is forbidden to beat old people, women, and children. One of the soldiers told me that I was impudent and was acting as if I knew the law. Then he hit me on the back of my head with the butt of his rifle. I collapsed and lost consciousness. I regained consciousness about forty minutes later. I saw that my head was bleeding, and blood was flowing down my body. I was dizzy and in pain, mostly in my back, chest, head, and left thigh. None of the soldiers were around. Only my donkey. He was eating the weeds that I had cut.”

Kashu’a went home with his donkey. He was taken by ambulance to the hospital in Tulkarm, where he was treated and later discharged.

On 2 April 2005, Bahija Sharbati, a resident of Hebron, saw two bars coming through the panels of wood her family had placed over the windows of their house to protect the windowpanes from being broken by settlers who lived nearby. “I realized the settlers were threading the iron bars through the wood so they could break the windowpanes,” she told B’Tselem. “I rushed outside and shouted to the soldier on the roof. As I did, I saw about ten settler children, aged 6-12. They threw stones at me. Three stones hit me: one in the chest, another in the left thigh, and the third in the back of my head. I shouted again to the soldier on the roof. He laughed…”

Sharbati was taken to hospital, got stitches, and was discharged the same night. When she arrived back home, she saw that six of her windows had been shattered.

Four days earlier, a B’Tselem staff member accompanied her children on the tortuous path they have to take to reach their house. They must take this path because of roadblocks set up by the army and the existence of the nearby Jewish settlement. Minutes after the B'Tselem staff person left the area, several of the settler children began to throw stones at the family’s house.

Bahija Sharbati later told B’Tselem: “I heard the sound of glass shattering in the children’s room… I shouted to the soldier stationed on the roof of my house to stop the settlers. There were more than ten children throwing stones. They were standing in the settlement, which is higher than our house… The soldier laughed and ordered me to go into the house.”

In March, B’Tselem and HaMoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual published a report on Israel’s harsh restrictions on the movement of Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip over the past four and a half years. These restrictions further tightened the siege that already existed on Gaza, essentially turning the area into one big prison.

Four video testimonies that portray life under the siege are now available on B’Tselem’s website.

Israeli officials regularly cite the existence of agricultural gates along the Separation Barrier as a solution to the harm the barrier causes to Palestinians living along the route. In practice, the gates do not provide a solution. Many of the gates are not opened regularly, and even when they are open, permission to cross is not automatically granted.

Construction of the Separation Barrier on their land forces farmers from Qafin, in the northern West Bank, to cross one such gate to get to their lands situated west of the barrier. Their lands are located inside the West Bank, near the Green Line. In October 2004, following the olive harvest, the army closed the gate, and it has remained closed for the past six months.

Farmers from Qafin turned to the District Coordination Office for assistance, after which the army agreed, in February, to let them work their land for three weeks, provided that they cross the barrier at the “Reihan” gate, which is several kilometers from Qafin.

But three weeks turned out to be only one day. The following day, the army revoked its permission to the farmers from Qafin to cross at the “Reihan” gate. In a letter to B’Tselem, the Civil Administration explained the revocation, saying that “a number of residents of Qafin had been found staying illegally in Israel.”

Revocation of the permission to use the alternate gate, which from the start had only been intended to be available to the farmers for a short time, is a form of prohibited collective punishment. The closing of the “Qafin” gate for such a long time severely infringes on the farmers' freedom of movement, their right to property, and their ability to earn a living and support their families.