Omar Abu al-Nil, 13, died from his wounds after Israeli snipers shot him in the neck during a protest on 21 August in Gaza.
Defense for Children International Palestine
Tamara Nassar -30 August 2021
A Palestinian boy died from his wounds on Saturday after Israeli forces shot him in the neck last week.
The lethal attack on 13-year-old Omar Hasan Abu al-Nil occurred during a protest on 21 August east of Gaza City’s Shujaiya neighborhood, near the boundary fence with Israel.
Omar was observing the demonstrations 70 to 100 meters from the fence when an Israeli sniper fired a live round at him, according to a field investigation by Defense for Children International Palestine.
He lost consciousness immediately, witnesses said.
The boy was taken to al-Shifa hospital for surgery and remained in intensive care for several days. He died shortly after midnight on 28 August.
Omar was one of 24 children injured by Israeli occupation forces on that day. At least three other children were shot with live ammunition in their lower limbs.
Omar’s death brings to 73 the number of Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip since the beginning of the year.
“Israeli forces routinely shoot and kill Palestinian children with impunity in circumstances that suggest unlawful and wilful killings,” Ayed Abu Eqtaish, DCIP’s accountability program director, said.
Abu Eqtaish called on the so-called international community “to hold Israel accountable by ending weapons sales and support for Israeli forces.”
Israeli snipers deployed on sand berms at the boundary with Gaza fired live ammunition, rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas canisters at demonstrators, injuring more than forty that day.
Israel’s gunfire also claimed the life of a Palestinian man – Osama Khaled Dueij, 31 – last week who was injured during the same protests.
Tweets from the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF about Omar’s injury and death attracted criticism when they failed to name Israeli forces as the perpetrators.
Meanwhile, Israel’s official propaganda app Act.IL urged its users to post comments online blaming Hamas for the child’s death to deflect Israel’s responsibility.
An Israeli sniper who was shot on 21 August with a bullet in the head while he was shooting at Palestinians in Gaza succumbed to his wounds on Monday.
Barel Hadaria Shmueli of Israel’s Border Police was shooting at Palestinians through a small opening in the Israel-controlled separation wall with the Gaza Strip during the protests.
In footage circulated by local media that day, Palestinians are seen trying to take down the soldier’s gun poking through the opening using sticks and rocks.
An individual is then seen approaching, pulling out a handgun and shooting through the opening in the wall.
The Israeli army later identified the injured sniper as Shmueli.
Collective punishment
Meanwhile, the Israeli military carried out airstrikes in Gaza on Saturday night after incendiary balloons were launched from the territory into southern Israel, and Palestinians held after-dark protests near Malaka – an area east of Gaza City.
Despite the Israeli army’s claim that its bombing attacks targeted Hamas military sites in the Strip, local media reported people’s homes being damaged:
Israeli troops injured at least 11 Palestinians protesting near the Israel-Gaza boundary fence earlier on Saturday, some with live fire.
Palestinians are protesting Israel’s ongoing siege on Gaza – a permanent and relentless attack on the entire civilian population of more than two million people in the coastal enclave, half of them children.
The siege is the backdrop for successive Israeli military assaults that have devastated Gaza’s economy, destroyed basic infrastructure and weakened major industries and sectors. It also isolates Gaza from the rest of Palestine and the world.
Israel imposes collective punishment on Gaza by conditioning any easing of restrictions – like allowing certain goods to enter the Strip, permitting some Palestinians in Gaza to work in Israel, or extending the permitted fishing area off Gaza’s coast – on whether Palestinians there resist Israel’s violence.
Moshe Tetro, the new officer for Gaza at COGAT – the bureaucratic arm of Israel’s military occupation – told Palestinians in Gaza that following Israel’s 11-day bombing campaign in May, “you have two options.”
He claimed in a video Sunday that their choices are “between terrorism or economy. Between violence and growth.”
Tetro’s threatening message was given amid a backdrop of happy images, including children playing and people working.
It is in keeping with COGAT’s efforts to falsely portray itself as a humanitarian body, instead of as what it really is: a military unit that deliberately harms civilians in order to try to force Palestinians to surrender to Israeli subjugation.
On Thursday, Egyptian authorities partially reopened the Rafah crossing, the Gaza Strip’s only passenger link to the outside world not directly controlled by Israel.
The crossing was only open for one day and only to those who wanted to enter Gaza.
Egypt indefinitely shuttered the crossing on 23 August in response to the protests during which Omar and Dueij were fatally shot, to assist Israel in collectively punishing the population in Gaza.
This strategic West Bank town has long been eyed by Israeli settlers, but its residents resolutely refuse to give up their lands, despite suffering repeated tragedies
Palestinian men use burning tyres to protest illegal Israeli settlement in Beita (MEE/Shatha Hammad)
Alaa Dweikat grew up playing hide-and-seek with her father, Imad, and four siblings. The nine-year-oldPalestiniannever expected it to turn into reality.
Imad, 38, has now disappeared from their lives forever, killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank town of Beita.
Fires, lasers and honks: How Beita’s ‘night confusion’ rallies are fighting Israeli settlers
On 6 August, as Imad’s family waited for him to come home for lunch, phones began ringing. Imad had been killed, they were told, shot by Israeli soldiers who were confronting protesting Beita residents on the nearby Jabal Sbeih, south of Nablus.
He is one of seven Palestinians, including two teenagers, killed since a protest campaign against an illegal Israeli settlement on the town’s outskirts broke out in May. Three of them are fathers, leaving behind some 15 children.
The Palestinians of Beita demonstrate against the Israeli expansion with peaceful methods. They are met with live bullets and teargas, leaving dozens wounded, many shot in the leg.
Mass arrests have seen more than 30 Palestinian men from the town detained in Israeli jails.
This once-sleepy West Bank village has become an epicentre of Palestinian resistance.
Met with bullets
Alaa, who is Imad’s eldest daughter, says she dreams of being an ambulance worker so she can prevent people’s deaths, like that of her father.
“Every day, I think of asking my mother when our father will be home from work, but then I remember that he’s dead and that he will never return,” Alaa tells Middle East Eye. “That is very difficult. I miss him every day.”
Like most young men in Beita, Imad went to Jabal Sbeih every Friday to participate in the peaceful popular activities defending their land against settler takeover.
'Wherever I look, I see Imad. I cannot stop waiting for him to return, even though I bid him farewell and I know that he is dead'
- Fathiya, Imad Dweikat's mother
He was hit with a “direct bullet to the chest, and he died immediately”, his brother Bilal tells MEE. “Imad was participating, like the rest of the people, in peaceful activities and not in a war. There is no justification for Israeli snipers to fire live ammunition."
Since his killing, Imad’s mother Fathiya, 77, can no longer sleep through the night. Sometimes she manages to get a few hours’ sleep, before waking up startled and sitting at the front door awaiting Imad’s impossible return.
“Wherever I look, I see Imad. I cannot stop waiting for him to return, even though I bid him farewell and I know that he is dead. We are living in a pain that will go on forever,” she told MEE, cradling Imad’s three-month-old son.
Families living the same pain
Said Dweikat sits in front of his house overlooking Beita, drinking his coffee. Flocks of birds swirl in the sky.
The town seems calm, but its residents have undergone daily violence. Every home has a connection to someone killed in the protests. Many residents nurse wounds, too, and many houses have been subjected to frequent raids and arrests.
“Every day, there is a family here waiting for one of its sons to be killed, wounded or arrested by the Israeli army. We all say ‘it's our turn now’,” Said tells MEE.
Palestinian child the latest victim of Israeli crackdown in Beita
Usually, Said shares his coffee with his brother Shadi. But Shadi was shot dead on 27 July, not as he protested, but as he voluntarily helped the Beita municipality open water pumps at the town’s entrance. The Israelis claimed he was armed with a metal rod – in fact it was his plumbing tools.
He left behind five children.
"His children ask us where their father is; we tell them that he is in heaven. They respond: ‘We do not want heaven, we want a father’. I cannot answer their questions anymore, it’s very painful,” says Said, tears running down his cheeks.
The whole town was left distraught by Shadi’s killing, Said says. As a plumber, he’d visited almost every home in Beita.
And if his death wasn’t hard enough, the Israeli army withheld his body for two weeks after killing him, piling pain and anger onto the misery already felt.
"Every hour, I think about how I'm going to spend the next hour without Shadi, how I'm going to live my life without him," says Said.
Stealing Jabal Sbeih
Beita’s recent history of violence and resistance began on 2 May, when residents spotted some twinkling lights on the top of Jabal Sbeih.
Settlers, accompanied by the army, were building an illegal settlement outpost without prior notice of the land having been confiscated.
It is not the first time that Israel has tried to take control of the hill. In 1978, with the opening of the settler highway 60, the Israeli army built a military outpost there, forcing the Palestinian landowners to turn to Israeli courts to retrieve their lands, which they managed to do in 1994.
The military outpost was removed, before being re-built during the 2000-2005 Second Intifada, and then removed again.
Huthayfa Budair, who owns land on the hill, says residents began to notice settlers' advances in the area four years ago, attracted by its strategic location.
'Every day, there is a family here waiting for one of its sons to be killed, wounded or arrested by the Israeli army. We all say "it's our turn now"'
- Said Dweikat, Beita resident
“A popular uprising took place with the participation of all the residents, and we managed to move the settlers out of the area,” says Huthayfa.
This year, however, settlers returned to Beita. In a mere six days, they installed 40 caravans, and paved a street leading to the hill, naming the outpost “Givat Eviatar”.
On 9 June, the Israeli army began removing the outpost, claiming that it was built during a tense security situation and without prior legalisation. Shortly after, however, the army seized the outpost for itself, declaring Jabal Sbeih a military area and preventing Palestinians from returning to their lands.
It transpired that the settlers had struck a deal with the government, which would see them leave their caravans on the hill for the military to take care of, until the land is declared property of the Israeli state, upon which they can return.
Huthayfa holds ownership documents over five dunams of land on Jabal Sbeih. Five other families from Beita were also able to provide legal documents proving their ownership of lands, as well as families from the nearby villages of Qabalan and Yatma.
Despite that, the Israeli Supreme Court on 15 August refused to consider an appeal against the outpost submitted by the landowners, a ruling condemned as premature by the Jerusalem Center for Legal Aid and Human Rights (JLAC), which submitted the appeal on behalf of the Palestinians.
The Supreme Court has postponed any final judgement on the legality of the outpost and the settlers’ deal with the government until the area has been surveyed and a final decision has been made on declaring it “state land”.
It argued that the landowners have the right to appeal instantly if the area is declared state land, but according to JLAC, the petition would not be considered until a decision is made regarding the legal status of the territory.
In fact, JLAC argued, the Supreme Court has already responded to the appeals with “total negligence”, and ignored the “blatant abuses committed by settlers on lands to which they have no right, which indicates that the courts see no legal issue with literally bending the law”.
Creative resistance
Over the past few months, young men in Beita have developed creative means of resisting settlers and the Israeli army’s bullets - in a campaign they call a “state of confusion”.
This is a combination of traditional resistance methods, such as throwing stones and burning tyres, and novel tactics like using lasers, loudspeakers, alarms and false sounds of explosions.
Protesters and others participating in protecting the land from settlement expansion have organised themselves into groups operating in day and night shifts, each with a particular mission. The area is constantly populated, and residents of Beita regularly make trips there.
“On Fridays, we young men go out with slingshots, while the old people go out carrying Palestinian flags. We also use burning tyres, fireworks and balloons,” one 25-year-old protestor told MEE, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“We monitor Israeli newspapers on social media and see the settlers’ reactions. We found that we succeeded in pressuring them and forcing them to leave the settlement - they also felt unsafe in the midst of the ongoing popular rejection of their presence.”
Palestinian youths set fire to tyres during a protest against an illegal Israeli settlement outpost in Beita (MEE/Shatha Hammad)
“We want to preserve Beita and its lands. We managed to get them off the mountain several times. This time will be their last - they’ll never return,” he adds.
Once the families retrieve their lands, he said, the whole town will celebrate. “It would be like a national wedding.”
Another activist, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of Israeli reprisals, tells MEE: “We are here at all times to preserve our ancestors' approach to preserving our lands and to prevent attacks or confiscations at any cost, even if it costs us our lives and our freedoms."
'Beita does not know any calm. It is always ablaze, and the Israeli army refrains from raiding it because it knows that it will pay a heavy price for each military raid'
- Beita activist
Beita is known for its resistance, and has been forced to face off the Israeli army several times over the years due to its geographical location, overlooking the route between Nablus and Jericho.
“Beita always fights in support of Gaza and [Palestinian] prisoners, and stands against any action taken by Israel in the West Bank. We sacrifice martyrs, wounded and prisoners, and that does not frighten us or prevent us from continuing,” the activist says.
“Beita does not know any calm. It is always ablaze, and the Israeli army refrains from raiding it because it knows that it will pay a heavy price for each military raid.”
Despite the settlers leaving Jabal Sbeih, the confrontations continue, albeit at a slower pace.
Residents vow they will not retreat until the entire hill is retrieved.
"Even if the outpost is removed and we retrieve Jabal Sbeih, Beita will not stop its struggle until all of Palestine is retrieved,” the activist said. “We hope that the Beita experience will be transferred to all the Palestinian villages that face settlement building daily.”
Israel’s latest assault on Gaza has prompted US labor unions to mobilize at unprecedented levels, further establishing Palestinian rights as a core component of progressive politics.
A Palestine solidarity activist hoists the Palestinian flag as demonstrators move to block an Israeli-owned ship at the Port of Oakland, in protest of Israel's aggressions, June 4, 2021. (Brooke Anderson)
As Israeli airstrikes dropped U.S.-made bombs on Gaza in May, damaging schools and hospitals, displacing thousands of Palestinians, and killing 260 people, many Americans looked on in horror. Then, some decided to take action.
On May 19, the United Educators of San Francisco, the union representing 6,200 public school teachers and aides in the California city, passed a resolution endorsing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), a movement promoting pressure on Israel until it stops violating Palestinian human rights. The union also called for the United States to end military aid to Israel, which it said was committing the crime of “apartheid.” (The United States sends $3.8 billion in annual military aid to Israel.)
The San Francisco resolution made history — it was the first time a public school union ever endorsed the BDS movement. Soon after, at least six other educator unions or individual union chapters passed similar measures. Other unions, from Roofers Local 36 in Los Angeles to journalists at The NewsGuild-CWA, published messages of support for Palestinians. And in June, a community picket organized by Palestinian rights advocates in the Bay Area succeeded in turning away an Israeli-owned ship after port workers refused to unload its cargo in protest of the Gaza violence.
The recent surge in support for Palestinian rights in the labor movement is one of the most tangible signs of how the debate on Israel has fundamentally changed in the United States. What was once seen as a fringe issue focused on a far-away conflict has turned into a central component of progressive politics, prompting labor unions to weigh in at unprecedented levels.
Palestinian rights activists attribute the shift to the call from Palestinian unions for solidarity in May; the growth of the BDS movement in the United States; the influence of the Black Lives Matter movement, which has embraced Palestinian rights activism; and the growing recognition by left-leaning Americans that Israeli rule over Palestinians constitutes apartheid — a recognition prompted by landmark reports from human rights groups B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch.
“It’s still very much on the margins of labor, but a lot more than it was [before],” said Michael Letwin, co-founder of Labor for Palestine, a group pushing U.S. unions to endorse BDS, and a former president of a union that represents public interest lawyers and advocates in New York City. “Every few years, there is a broadening of labor statements in this country on Palestine, and it usually comes after the intense attacks on Gaza. A new generation of young union activists in this country is inspired by Palestinian resistance.”
As Israeli violence against Palestinians escalated in May, Palestinian trade unions called for unions around the world to hold protests, publish statements, and refuse to handle Israeli goods. Many U.S. unions cited that ask in their Palestine solidarity resolutions. Palestinian rights advocates also say union solidarity with Palestine is in keeping with a core tenet of labor struggles: that “an injury to one is an injury to all,” as the Industrial Workers of the World once put it.
“Labor power has always been about international solidarity and all exploited people rising up against all forms of oppression,” said Lara Kiswani, executive director of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), which led the Bay Area community picket that blocked the unloading of Israeli goods. “The everyday rank and file worker understands that. When they hear Palestinian workers asking for stands in solidarity, when they hear Palestinian workers are exploited, it’s very easy for them to make that connection, [to say], ‘we have a duty to be in solidarity with Palestinian workers.’”
But despite the recent success, labor activists who want a full turn to Palestine solidarity within unions still face significant challenges. Members of the National Education Association, one of the U.S.’s two national teachers unions, rejected a resolution at their annual conference in September calling on the United States to end aid to Israel. National union leadership also remains opposed to the BDS movement, and some of those unions have invested in Israel Bonds.
Palestine solidarity activists move to block an Israeli-owned ship at the Port of Oakland, in protest of Israel’s latest aggressions, June 4, 2021. (Brooke Anderson)
The split over Israel between union locals and national leadership mirrors the growing gap within the Democratic Party, where grassroots activists and a handful of progressive legislators are moving further left on Palestine than party leaders, who remain committed to the traditional Washington consensus that the U.S.-Israel alliance should remain intact.
And while pro-Israel groups such as StandWithUs have failed to stop the initial wave of union declarations supporting the Palestinian call to boycott Israel, the Israel advocacy community is now finding its footing. Pro-Israel groups, particularly in Los Angeles, where the teachers’ union is debating a resolution on BDS, are helping those who oppose union resolutions condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza by organizing petitions and letters for teachers and parents to sign.
“Many labor union members have asked us for assistance, because they do not want their unions to promote campaigns of hate against Israel,” said Roz Rothstein, the co-founder and CEO of Israel advocacy group StandWithUs.
Union foreign policy
U.S. labor unions have a history of involvement in foreign policy issues. During the Cold War, the AFL-CIO, the largest and most influential federation of unions in the United States, worked with the U.S. foreign policy establishment to undermine leftist influence in overseas unions as part of their “business unionism” philosophy, which posited that unions should focus on accruing material advantages within a capitalist system, rather than agitate for broad societal change.
But other elements of the union movement took a different position on foreign affairs. When the AFL-CIO supported the Vietnam War, officials in the United Auto Workers dissented, calling for negotiations to end the war. And when the AFL-CIO supported President Ronald Reagan’s backing of an anti-communist government in El Salvador, other unions lobbied Congress to cut off U.S. military aid to the country.
On rare occasions, Palestine was the subject of action by workers with an internationalist lens on politics. In 1969, the newspaper of the Detroit-based League of Revolutionary Black Workers, a movement that launched wildcat strikes carried out without the official backing of a union, published articles in support of Palestine. In 1973, almost 2,000 Arab-American workers at Detroit auto plants walked off the job to protest the United Auto Workers union buying of Israel Bonds, a common way of investing in the Israeli economy.
Around 2,500 Palestine solidarity activists march to the Port of Oakland to block an Israeli-owned ship, in response to Israel’s assault on Gaza, August 16, 2014. (Daniel Arauz)
Union support for Palestinians under Israeli occupation emerged again in the early 2000s, in response to Israel’s measures during the Second Intifada. Building on its decades-long history of labor action against international repression, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) local in Oakland, which represents Oakland port cargo handlers, released a statement calling for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel.
But before this year’s labor actions, the most notable moment in the history of U.S. labor solidarity with Palestine came in 2014, as Israeli bombs rained down on Gaza during Operation Protective Edge. That year, UAW 2865, which represents more than 19,000 graduate workers in the University of California system, became the first major union to endorse BDS. (UAW leadership ultimately overturned the local’s decision.)
On Aug. 16, 2014, the Arab Resource and Organizing Center launched a community picket at Oakland’s port, known as the “Block the Boat” campaign. Thousands of people came out to the action, calling on ILWU port workers to refuse to unload cargo from an Israeli ship owned by ZIM Integrated Shipping Services, a company that has shipped Israeli weaponry. The picket worked, at least for a time: ILWU workers honored the community picket for four days and refused to handle the Israeli goods. Ultimately, workers unloaded the ship after the boat left the Oakland port and then secretly returned to bypass protests.
ZIM did not return to Oakland for years — until another ship owned by the company tried to dock in Oakland in late May 2021, in the aftermath of yet another Israeli assault on Gaza. AROC launched another community picket, and once again, ILWU honored it. The ship never docked in Oakland, and was also held up by other community pickets in Canada and Seattle, where it eventually docked and unloaded goods after the police there broke up the picket line.
“It was the workers in Palestine that put out a call not to unload Israeli cargo. We brought that call to ILWU’s union hall, spoke directly to them and showed why we’re holding a community picket. The workers responded to that and it was met with action,” explained AROC’s Kiswani.
The ILWU union chapter in the Bay Area was particularly receptive to the calls from Palestinian rights activists because of its history as a Black-led union allied with social justice movements.
“It’s one of the most militant and principled labor organizations in the country. They have an internationalist lens, and they do a tremendous amount of political organization,” said Wassim Hage, an organizer with AROC. “They’re predisposed towards flexing worker power and showing the bosses what the ILWU is capable of.”
A Palestine solidarity activist holds a sign as demonstrators move to block an Israeli-owned ship at the Port of Oakland, in protest of Israel’s aggressions, June 4, 2021. (Brooke Anderson)
Palestinian rights advocates say the “Block the Boat” action is perhaps the most important type of BDS campaign that activists have taken up.
“When school student governments pass a divestment resolution, it’s more of a recommendation. But the schools don’t actually pull out money. When longshoremen decide not to unload Israeli ships, they actually lose money. So it’s one of the most successful, tangible forms of BDS,” said Nerdeen Kiswani, a New York-based Palestinian activist (who is not related to AROC director Lara Kiswani). In May, she took part in protests that tried, but failed, to block the unloading of goods from another ZIM ship docked at the New Jersey port.
But while the “Block the Boat” success of 2021 was a reprise of its 2014 victory, the wave of teachers’ unions condemning Israel’s human rights abuses marked a new phase in the push to move labor closer to the Palestinian rights movement.
Teachers speak out for Palestine
The San Francisco union’s endorsement of BDS inspired teachers in Seattle and Los Angeles to push their own unions to pass similar resolutions. In Seattle, the measure to endorse BDS and call for the United States to end military aid to Israel passed with 90 percent of the vote.
While the immediate impetus was anger at Israel’s push to displace Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah and the deadly aerial assault on Gaza, teachers in Seattle who organized around the resolution say it got so much support because of the organizing teachers in the city had done around another issue: police brutality against Black people. The link between U.S.police militarization and Israeli occupation was made explicit in the resolution, which urged to end the Seattle Police Department’s practice of sending officers to train with Israeli forces.
“We made the link between our union’s stance on Black Lives Matter, anti-racism and white supremacy [and Palestine],” said Emma Klein, a Seattle elementary school teacher. “That link was really powerful when we presented it to the representative assembly. The struggles Black and brown people face in the United States are not the same as the struggles people in Palestine face, but there’s so many similarities, that if you stand for Black Lives Matter, you have to stand for Palestinian liberation.”
In New York, the delegate assembly of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), the union representing faculty and staff who work in the City University of New York system, passed a measure in June calling for the United States to end military funding of Israeli human rights abuses by a 84-34 vote.
Palestine solidarity activists hoist the Palestinian flag as they move to block an Israeli-owned ship at the Port of Oakland, in protest of Israel’s aggressions, June 4, 2021. (Brooke Anderson)
“When I came to CUNY as a freshman, which was in 2012-2013, I had been introduced to professors and people who were part of the union. We wanted to do work on Palestine. A lot of these professors were supportive, but whenever we talked about doing anything at the PSC level, they used to say ‘Palestine for the PSC is a third rail,’” said Nerdeen Kiswani, who is also a member of CUNY4Palestine, a group of professors and students organizing within the CUNY system for Palestinian rights. “[So] much has changed in less than 10 years. A resolution like this is one of the markers of progress that we’ve been able to achieve.”
A backlash emerges
But the overwhelming union support for Palestinian rights has also been met with a backlash. A small number of professors in the PSC — at least 50, according to one report — have stopped paying union dues in protest of the decision to condemn Israel’s human rights abuses.
After the executive board of the Rutgers union for part-time faculty published a statement calling on their parent union, the American Federation of Teachers, “to divest itself of all Israeli bonds and for the United States government to cease all financial support to Israel at once,” Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey condemned the union. In a letter to the Rutgers University president, Gottheimer connected the statement to the upsurge in antisemitic attacks in the United States — a linkage that executive board member David Letwin, who is also a member of Jews for Palestinian Right of Return (and the brother of Labor for Palestine’s Michael Letwin), called “part of a much broader campaign by Israel’s supporters to silence Palestine advocates with manufactured accusations of anti-Jewish bigotry.”
The Los Angeles teachers’ union has also been embroiled in a particularly fierce debate. The May decision by five Los Angeles teachers unions’ chapters to issue statements in solidarity with Palestinians, and in three resolutions endorse BDS and demand a halt to U.S. aid to Israel, led the United Teachers of Los Angeles to schedule a September union-wide vote on the measure. That has spurred Israel advocates to mobilize to defeat the resolution, setting up a clash for the upcoming meeting.
The LA union chapters’ statements also led to vitriolic arguments among union members on opposing sides, with Israel supporters in the union claiming the resolutions were personal attacks on them as Jews, said Maya Daniels, an LA teacher who brought a pro-BDS resolution to her union chapter in the Harbor Region area in the city. Meanwhile, Palestinian rights advocates within the union have been the subject of social media harassment.
Palestine solidarity activists move to block an Israeli-owned ship at the Port of Oakland, in protest of Israel’s latest aggressions, June 4, 2021. (Brooke Anderson)
“Someone took 70 pages of comments from a union group, and sent them to my boss, and my bosses’ boss, and my bosses’ bosses’ boss, and to three rabbis in the area, to get me fired,” said Daniels, an LA teacher who brought a pro-BDS resolution to her union chapter in the Harbor Region in the city.
According to Daniels, the energy to continue pushing for Palestine solidarity within the union dissipated as members realized the controversy it aroused. Now, she added, the UTLA leadership is looking to head off a union-wide vote on the Palestine resolutions. Instead, they plan to put forward a resolution to table the vote, and organize forums to discuss the issue. The UTLA did not respond to a request for comment from +972.
Daniels said she expected that resolution to pass, killing the chance for a union-wide vote. “The organization as a whole caved to bullying and intimidation,” she said.
Still, Daniels noted that even if the vote on a Palestine solidarity resolution is killed, the resolutions were a success in that they broke the silence on a topic too many people were afraid to touch before the escalation in Israeli violence in May.
“I don’t think it’s going away at all. For a lot of members who did go through the fire [of controversy over Palestine], it was educational, empowering, fortifying,” Daniels told +972. “This wasn’t our moment. There wasn’t the groundwork. There wasn’t the energy. But it’s not going to go away. We’re going to wait until the next uproar — the next time there’s a trending hashtag, the next video. It’s not ignorable anymore.”
Anhar al-Deek, 26, is expected to have a cesarean delivery while in Israeli custody. (Photo: via Social Media)
August 31, 2021
Palestinian media reported yesterday that an Israeli court rejected the release of a Palestinian woman who is nine months pregnant and due to give birth in detention.
Twenty-five-year-old Al-Deek from the town of Kafr Ni’ma, west of Ramallah, was detained when she was four months pregnant.
Last week, she appealed to the international community to pressure Israel to release her and allow her to give birth outside prison.
“What should I do if I give birth far from you? I am tied up, how can I give birth via cesarean section when I am alone in prison?” Anhar wrote in a letter to her family, adding:
“I am exhausted, and I had severe pains in the pelvis and severe pain in my legs due to sleeping on the prison beds. I do not know how I want to sleep on it after my delivery operation.”
The Permanent Observer Mission of the State of Palestine to the United Nations in Geneva sent an urgent appeal calling for the international community to take action to release her.
The mission reported that she is facing harsh conditions, and is now on the verge of being placed in inhumane and unsanitary conditions as delivery nears. It also called on the international community to intervene immediately, in support of international law, and to take decisive action to compel Israel to release her and all prisoners who are being arbitrarily detained, especially women and children.
There are around 4,850 Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons, including 41 women, 225 children, and 540 administrative detainees – held without charge or trial, according to institutions concerned with prisoners’ affairs.
Killing of the strident Fatah critic has underlined the PA’s complicity with Israel and how far Mahmoud Abbas will go to crush dissent
An image of Nizar Banat is held aloft as Palestinians rally in Ramallah city in early August, denouncing the Palestinian Authority following his violent arrest and death. Photograph: Abbas Momani/AFP/Getty Images
Bethan McKernan, and Quique Kierszenbaum in Hebron-Tue 31 Aug 2021
Nizar Banat knew he was going to die. As he grew bolder calling out corrupt members of Fatah, the party which controls the Palestinian Authority, the death threats mounted. In May, his home near Hebron was attacked by masked gunmen on motorbikes, in an incident which left his children traumatised.
After that, the political activist decided it wasn’t safe to stay home. “He went to his cousin’s house in H2 [an area of Hebron city controlled by the Israeli military] because he hoped Fatah and the PA could not reach him there, but he knew they were coming for him,” said Jihan, Banat’s widow, as she hugged their youngest son in the family’s reception room in the village of Dura. The front of the house is still pockmarked with bullet holes. “He told me: ‘I don’t want to be killed in front of the children.’”
It was early morning on 24 June when Jihan received the news she dreaded. According to his two cousins, who witnessed the abduction, Nizar had been severely beaten but was still alive when he was dragged from the house by 14 men from the Palestinian security forces who were given Israeli permission to enter H2. There was no arrest warrant.
Jihan and three of their children - Kabas, 14; Khalil, 2; and Mariam, 4, at the Banat family home in Dura. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian
Twenty minutes later, the vehicle arrived at Hebron government hospital – but Banat was already dead. The PA said his death was from natural causes. But according to an autopsy commissioned by his family, the activist died after suffering 42 injuries inflicted with metal pipes.
Distracted by the latest war in Gaza and a new government, Banat’s killing was barely noticed by Israel or the rest of the world. But for Palestinians, it has proven to be a profound turning point, laying bare both the authority’s complicity in Israeli occupation and the increasingly autocratic lengths Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah’s ageing and deeply unpopular leader, is willing to go to in order to crush dissent.
Representatives for Fatah and the Palestinian Authority did not respond to repeated requests for more information regarding the circumstances surrounding Banat’s death. Nor did they comment on the escalating brutality, including sexual violence, used by official forces and plainclothes Fatah loyalists to suppress protests and strikes which have ignited across the West Bank in the wake of his killing, according to the Palestinian journalists’ union and human rights groups.
“Other people are critics of the PA, but no one was like Nizar. He was articulate: he could join the dots in a way others couldn’t, dismantling the PA’s lies with truth,” said Fadi Quran, a prominent human rights activist who has been arrested several times by both Israeli and Palestinian forces.
“The fact he used to be a member of Fatah himself also made him a threat. He was not just speaking to the opposition, but directly to their base,” he said over coffee at a gathering of activists in a Ramallah cafe.
“He was their biggest weakness,” added Fares Bader, a young man also at the forefront of the new wave of demonstrations against the authority. “The PA wants to deter us and distract us, stop the popular momentum that has been building against it. But instead, killing Nizar has become a catalyst.”
Palestinian protesters rally in Ramallah in July, denouncing the Palestinian Authority in the aftermath of the death of activist Nizar Banat. Photograph: Abbas Momani/AFP/Getty Images
Born to a working-class family, Banat studied at university in Jordan before returning to the West Bank, where he trained as a lawyer and met Jihan, with whom he had five children. He eventually ended up teaching Arabic, while Jihan worked at USAid until she lost her job when the Trump administration slashed funding.
Fiercely intelligent, the 43-year-old Banat was, according to friends and family, a storyteller who for many years was more interested in philosophy than politics, and wrote a book about the history of the Palestinian struggle.
But as the nature of Palestinian politics and governance changed, so did he. The authority was formed in 1994 as part of the Oslo peace accords with Israel as a five-year interim body designed to administer parts of the West Bank and coordinate with Israel on security matters. Its final status was never agreed, however, as talks stalled and the second intifada, or uprising, erupted. Abbas was elected to a four-year term in 2005 and has remained in charge ever since.
Under his watch a corrupt, repressive and ineffectual ruling class has emerged – one which is increasingly preoccupied by internal power struggles over who will succeed the 85-year-old president. Yet Abbas’ regime still enjoys strong support from Israel and western donors who see the authority as a better option than Hamas, the militant group in control of the Gaza Strip, and fear a power vacuum if the West Bank body collapsed.
“Honestly, it’s got to a point in some ways where my colleagues in Ramallah have more issues than we do,” said one human rights campaigner in Gaza City, who asked not to be named. “Right now people are far more afraid of criticising Fatah than Hamas.”
Banat was not one of them. Furious at an elite he saw as selling out the Palestinian cause for personal gain, over the last few years he attracted more than 100,000 followers on Facebook for videos in which he broke down the illegality of the Palestinian establishment’s actions and policies.
The activist was arrested several times under the authority’s draconian cybercrime laws and charged with offences such as treason and incitement. Ever proud and sharp-tongued, in one video Banat declared he would only accept the ruling of a judge who managed to beat his own score of 94% in the bar exam.
Like so many others, at the beginning of 2021 Banat dared to hope for meaningful change when, in an effort to curry favour with the Biden administration, the authority announced the first elections for 15 years. He planned to stand as the head of the newly formed Freedom and Dignity List in the parliamentary poll slated for May.
“Nizar represented the hopes of a whole generation. We knew elections wouldn’t fix everything, but it would be a start at restoring legitimacy in the political system,” said Issa Khatib, another young activist in Ramallah. “Fatah miscalculated though. When they realised they were going to lose to Hamas, they cancelled [the elections]. That’s when everything kicked up a notch.”
Banat’s was the loudest voice lambasting the decision. The attack on his home by unknown gunmen while his children were sleeping came a few nights later, in early May.
“I’ve always been there to help him out. I warned him to tone it down. I have been through the same stuff … targeting your family, death threats,” said Issa Amro, a well-known activist and longtime friend of Banat who lives in H2, the Israeli-administered sector of Hebron.
Issa Amro says that Banat’s death ‘shows clearly Palestinians have two oppressors: Israel and the PA’. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian
Instead, from hiding, Banat increased the tempo and venom of his attacks, calling on the EU to impose sanctions on the authority for cancelling the elections and criticising the bungled handling of a Covid-19 vaccination deal with Israel.
“In H2 he should have been safer. But the PA coordinated with Israel so its forces could enter,” Amro said. “His death shows clearly Palestinians have two oppressors: Israel, and the PA. The PA are puppets … an authority without authority. But even that is tricky for us to say out loud, because it means the Israelis can turn around and say ‘Look, we have no real partners for peace.’”
The authority eventually apologised for Banat’s death and promised an internal investigation. Over the last two months, however, peaceful protests in Ramallah calling for an independent inquiry have been met with eye-watering violence from authority officers as well as plainclothes Fatah supporters wielding sticks and iron bars.
Last weekend, about 30 civil society figures – among them the activist Fadi Quran, trade unionists, former political prisoners, journalists, poets and professors – were arrested. Some were charged with taking part in an illegal gathering, despite the fact that organisers must give notice of planned demonstrations in advance. Detainees spoke of overcrowded, unsanitary and humiliating conditions.
“Being shot at, arrested and beaten by Israelis doesn’t hurt as much as being attacked by your own people,” said a lawyer who was allegedly sexually assaulted by six Ramallah policemen as she was arrested during a protest in July and did not want her name published. At the station, she said she had to stop officers from trying to take young women away from the main holding cell.
“They psych up the men before they set them loose on us, tell them we are whores, steal photos from our phones. Everyone is a target, but they want to make women too afraid to even come outside.”
Public anger with the authority’s many failures is cresting. But rather than acknowledge any wrongdoing, the authority and Fatah appear to be doubling down on a playbook of repression and intimidation.
In some respects, the authority has never been weaker, which gives its opponents hope – but it comes at a cost, Quran said.
“It’s a high price Nizar paid. More of us will have to pay it in the future,” he said. “We are prepared for that.”
