Today some of us ISMers went to Kafr Kaddum village, to observe a protest that happens in that place every Friday (and now also Saturdays). It was not my first time there, my wife and I went there last summer a few times as well.
Background
I managed to sit down with Murad, who helps lead the weekly demonstrations, to learn a bit more about the sitution.
Kafr Kaddum is a Palestinian village in the West Bank, close to Nablus and Qalqilya, which are big Palestinian cities.
In 1978, a group of Israeli settlers set up the settlement that they called Kadumim. According to Murad, they stole 4000 dunums of Palestinian land... from a total of 24000 dunums. The villagers however at that time did not resist.
In 2003, the Israeli Army confiscated the main road leading from Kufr Qaddum to Nablus and Qalqilya. Before the road was closed, the distance between Kufr Kaddum and the nearest village was 1.5 kilometres. Now it is 15 kilometres.
For eight years, the Palestinians tried negotiating with the Israeli government, but to no effect. The Army stated the road will be closed "until the situation calms down:". It was clear they had no intention of giving it back.
The first demonstration happened on July 1, 2011. It was the beginning of five years of demonstrations.
Almost every demonstration in Kafr Kaddum begins the same way. People try marching to the main road, to find soldiers waiting for them there. Clashes break out between them and the young men and youth, who are armed with rocks and slings. The soldiers are armed with live ammunition, rubber coated steel bullets, teargas cannisters, and sound grenades. They also use a truck that sprays a foul smelling liquid called "skunk".
Murad shared some statistics with us.
In the past years, there had been 331 marches.
In the last two years, 85 people had been shot with live ammunition.
Thirteen of them were children.
One hundred eighty people are documented to have been shot with rubber coated steel bullets. The number is probably a lot higher, since not every such shooting is documented, One person was shot in the eye, and lost it.
Hundreds of villagers had been directly.shot with teargas cannisters, that had been directly aimed at them. One person was shot in the head, and is now brain damaged. Recently, the Army began to put a plastic tip at the end of the gas cannister, so it flies with more velocity. When aimed at a person's chest or head, it is enough to kill. The cannisters (both these and the "normal ones") are fired directly at the people throwing rocks, or those standing next to them.
On July 1, 2014, a seventy five year old man died after being suffocated by teargas.
On March 4, Khaled, who is Murad's eleven year old son, was shot in the leg with a live round. He fell down, and another man pleaded with the soldiers to stop shooting so he could carry him to an ambulance. The soldiers shot him also. Khaled had to have surgery on his leg.
The Israeli Army enforces collective punishment on the village, in an attempt to stop the demonstrations.
Checkpoints are set up around the village randomly, and villagers are searched as they enter and leave the village. Soldiers raid the village at night, sometimes breaking into people's homes to arrest those involved in the demonstrations. At other times, they throw sound bombs into people's homes while people are sleeping.
During clashes, teargas is fired into not only people who are protesting (whether or not they throw rocks), but also sometimes into the entire village. They cannisters sometimes are shot into people's homes, so many families had had to install a mesh around their windows. Another thing that is fired into people's houses is skunk water, which drenches their buildings, whether they are protesting or not.
The soldiers began to bulldoze mounds of dirt onto the village's road, to stop people from trying to reach the confiscated part while demonstrating. Doing so, they also take care to destroy the main water pipe. According to Murad, they do this every week.
Murad had been arrested, and spent 9 months in prison for being an organizer of the weekly demonstration. He had to pay 10,000 shekels before being released.
So far, a total of 250,000 shekels had been leveled in fines against the village.
In the words of Murad, "to be free, you must pay".
Although the Israeli Army tyrannizes the people of the village, not all Israelis are like that. As Murad pointed out, at every demonstration in the past five years, Israeli activists have came out to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Murad stated he is "not political". He said that if the villagers would get the road back and the settlers and soldiers ended the harassment, there would be no problems.
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