Sunday, 29 June 2014

RETIRED SYRIAN PILOTS FLYING IRAQI SUKHOIS RECEIVED FROM RUSSIA, BELARUS

Iraq receives fighter jets from Russia, Belarus

A modernized Sukhoi Su-35S of the Russian Air Force

Baghdad government has received the first batch of Russian-made Sukhoi fighter planes to use them against the militants from the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Iraqi army sources said on Saturday that the fighter jets are expected to be stationed at an airbase in the country's south.

The development follows earlier reports that the country has purchased several used Sukhoi planes from Belarus and Russia.

Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had earlier said Sukhoi fighter jets will turn the tide against the ISIL and its associated militant groups within days.

The Iraqi premier has also criticized Washington for delaying the delivery of US F-16 jets purchased by Baghdad. Al-Maliki said the al-Qaeda-linked militants’ advance could have been avoided if US jets had been delivered on time.

This is while the Iraqi army continues pounding the ISIL positions after retaking the northern city of Tikrit and killing dozens of militants.

Iraqi officials have also confirmed that the town of Khalis is under full control of army forces. The town is located about 15 kilometers north of Baquba and is one of the six districts of Diyala Province.

On Friday, Iraqi army took full control of all areas in the eastern provinces except for the Sa’adiyah district. The military said a large number of the ISIL militants were killed in the flashpoint province during the army operations.

Soldiers of the Iraqi army have been engaged in heavy fighting with the militants in different fronts and have so far been able to push back militants in several areas.

Premier al-Maliki has vowed that the country’s security forces would confront the foreign-sponsored militants.

JR/AB/SS

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RETIRED SYRIAN PILOTS FLYING SUKHOIS FOR IRAQ

Ziad Fadel

The Iraqi government has wasted no time asserting its air supremacy by purchasing close to 90 Sukhoi-25 Fencers multi-role bombers from the Russian Federation and Belarus. But who is going to pilot the jets? Enter 400 retired Syrian Air Force pilots trained to fly Sukhois who will complement a few Iranians. SyrPer has learned that the Iraqi government is paying top dollar for these experienced pilots whose role will be to provide air cover for advancing Iraqi army forces and devastating fire power against the hordes of U.S.-sponsored, -funded and -trained ISIS terrorists infesting brotherly Iraq. I have been informed that even active-duty Syrian pilots will be involved in orienting the retired officers to the topography and geography of Iraq.

Don’t believe any story about U.S. drones flying in Iraqi air space to provide Intel for the Iraqi armed forces. The Syrian government has already warned Mr. Al-Maliki that those drones will be used to improve the military position of ISIS before any useful information will be forwarded to Iraqi Army HQ.

We have no details about how much Iraq is paying for its new pilots, but, it must be quite a sum and the obligations are extremely urgent and important.

The U.S., tied to its bankrupt relationship with the Zionist Khazar Apartheid Entity, is unable to play anything but a negative role in the evolution of this attack on the sovereignty and dignity of the Iraqi Republic.

We at SyrPer are proud to know that experienced Syrian pilots are dominating the air over the Land of the Two Great Rivers and that their role will be decisive in blunting the effects of the NATO re-invasion of independent, sovereign Iraq.

Here are the reports coming in from these areas:

HOMS:

Abu Hawaadeed in the rural east: Fighting on a small scale.

Umm Sahreej: Ditto.

Al-Khurayja, Al-Naasiriyya (Hoola), Kafr Laahaa (Hoola), Umm Sharshooh (a flatbed with 23mm destroyed).

HOMS CITY: Another 64 former terrorists are granted settlement of their situation pursuant to the Amnesty Decree.

________________________________________________________________________

IDLIB:

Fighting here: Ma’ar-Zaaf, Bizza Farms, Kafr Laataa, Ma’ar-Baleet, Nahla, Binnish and the Bikfaloon Wall. No details. Number of mercenary terrorists reduced considerably.

______________________________________________________________

DER’AH:

Inkhil-Simleen Road: A convoy of trucks laden with weapons arriving from Jordan was destroyed by SAAF followed by SAA infantry. No details available.

North Inkhil: At the Water Tower, a pack of scavenger mercenaries was destroyed by the SAA. Of the 16 killed, only these were identified:

Mustafaa Qaashaat

Adham Jawhar

‘Itmaan-Tafass Road: Fighting with no details.

West ‘Itmaan: Attempted infiltration from the area of the stone quarries resulted in 5 dead terrorists of Nusra.

Southeast Wardaat: Skirmishing with no details.

Al-Nu’ayma: East of the “Center”, the SAA uncovered a 300 meter-long tunnel complete with weapons and ammunition that was turned over to NDF and ANG for use in killing Saudis.

Simleen west of the water reservoir: Fighting with no details.

North Bayt Al-Jamal in the ‘Itmaan area: Ditto.

Al-Hiraak: Another foolhardy attempted encroachment on an SAA outpost was shut out and shut down with 10 confirmed dead terrorists still dotting the landscape. No names.

East Muhijja: Fighting with no details.

Zimreen: Ditto.

Der’ah City: An attempted infiltration from the Bilaal Al-Habashi Mosque east to the military checkpoint resulted in the entire pack of criminals being eliminated and a heavy machine gun siezed. No names.

Obama throws gasoline on Mideast fire

"If the American people ever figure out what their government is doing, it is Washington, DC that will burn to the ground"

PressTV

Motorists know that if a fire breaks out at a petrol station, you cannot put it out by spraying it with gasoline. But according to recent reports, it seems the American president isn’t that smart.

On Friday we learned that Obama is asking Congress for $500 million for the so-called Syrian rebels. Apparently he does not realize that the problem he says he wants to solve – ISIL terrorists overrunning Iraq and Syria – was created by the US and its allies’ funding of the Syrian insurgents. Throwing more money at the “Syrian rebels” would be throwing gasoline on the fire.

Obama, of course, doesn’t see it that way. He claims that he has finally learned to tell the difference between the “good rebels” and the “bad rebels.” According to the Associated Press, “administration officials say the U.S. has grown increasingly confident in recent months about its ability to distinguish the moderate rebels from the more extremist elements that include the al-Qaida-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, which has stormed into Iraq and captured much of the northern part of the country.”

These administration officials are tacitly admitting that the US has been “inadvertently” arming ISIL – a vicious terrorist group that was expelled from al-Qaeda for being too extreme. They want us to believe it was a mistake.

If those administration officials are right, Obama should be impeached for incompetence. Allowing American dollars to build and grow ISIL, even by mistake, would be a blunder of colossal proportions.

But was it really a mistake? Many credible reports have emerged that the US has been intentionally funding ISIL. This week, investigative journalists found strong evidence that the CIA has trained and armed ISIL terrorists at a secret base in Jordan. While Press TV and other alternative media outlets are covering these revelations, the mainstream Western media has suppressed them.

So these US administration officials are lying when they tell us: “In the past we were inadvertently funding ISIL, but now we have figured out who they are, so we won’t give them any more American taxpayers’ money. We promise to hand the next $500 million to other groups.”

Such a claim is preposterous. In fact, the US has been behind the rise of ISIL all along. And if Congress is stupid and evil enough to approve Obama’s request for another $500 million, ISIL will get the lion’s share of that, too.

In reality, there are no viable “moderate Syrian opposition” militias. Yes, there are some mostly-imaginary groups created by US taxpayer dollars and run mainly by exiles who have not set foot in Syria for years, decades, or even generations. Such nonexistent “moderate Syrian rebels” are just a scam for defrauding the US treasury and hiding the reality of who is really getting those US taxpayer dollars. The “moderate US puppet rebels” have virtually no support in the region and no meaningful military presence. The destabilization of Syria and Iraq has been almost entirely accomplished by extremist Takfiri terrorist groups. The two biggest are ISIL (the ultra-extremist terrorists) and the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Nusra front (the merely extremist terrorists). These are the people who will get most of the $500 million Obama wants to send to Syria and Iraq.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki apparently understands that the US is playing a double game: Pretending to oppose ISIL, while covertly creating and supporting it. That is why al-Maliki has decided to buy used fighter jets from Russia to fight ISIL, rather than wait for the long-promised US jets that may never arrive. Al-Maliki recognizes that by refusing to deliver aircraft, the US had intentionally set the stage for ISIL’s invasion and occupation of northern Iraq: “We shouldn’t have just bought U.S. jets, we should have bought British, French and Russian jets to provide air support. If we had air support, none of this would have happened,” al-Maliki told the BBC.

US Army Colonel Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, responded by claiming that the US was sending fighter aircraft purchased by Iraq “as quickly as possible” but they wouldn’t arrive till fall. Apparently the US is not in any particular hurry to help the Iraqi government prevent its dismemberment by ultra-extreme terrorists.

If we are to believe the American government, it seems to have armed ISIL far more efficiently “by accident” – and for free – than it is able to arm the Iraqi government intentionally even when the Iraqis are buying military equipment at market prices. Perhaps al-Maliki should ask the US to accidentally send him some free fighter jets.

What explains this bizarre, two-faced US policy? In a word: Destabilization. The real US policy goal is to hamstring, cripple, dismember and destroy Middle Eastern nations. The destabilization doctrine is set by the Zionist lobby, which dominates US Mideast policy. Israel’s desire, expressed decades ago by Oded Yinon, is to have the countries of the region split up into balkanized sub-units. So the Zionist-driven US creates and runs extremist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIL. These groups attack and destabilize Middle Eastern countries in an effort to split those countries apart. They also provide a pretext for US intervention in the region.

So the US government is using the hyped-up threat of the ISIL extremists to throw more money and weapons at – who else – the ISIL extremists. It is only pretending to try to put out the fire by spraying it with gasoline. In fact, it knows perfectly well that it is committing arson, while dressed up in the uniform of a firefighter.

If the American people ever figure out what their government is doing, it is Washington, DC, not the Middle East, that will burn to the ground.

KB/HSN

Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist, is one of America's best-known critics of the War on Terror. Dr. Barrett has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications. Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin, where he ran for Congress in 2008. He is the co-founder of the Muslim-Christian-Jewish Alliance, and author of the books Truth Jihad: My Epic Struggle Against the 9/11 Big Lie (2007) and Questioning the War on Terror: A Primer for Obama Voters (2009). His website is www.truthjihad.com. More articles by Dr. Barrett

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

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London Times Exposes Saudi Creation of Terrorist Threat

London Times Exposes Saudi Creation of Terrorist Threat

London Times correspondent Roger Boyes, in an article, "Time to tell the Saudis some home truths,"warned yesterday about the security threats to Britain posed by the Saudi-funded and -aided terrorists inside his country. "Saudi money tops up the coffers of insurgents in Syria and Iraq. Saudi terrorists easily outnumber fighters from other foreign countries; there are at least 1,200 Saudi terrorists in the field, and perhaps as many as 2,000," Boyes wrote. He pointed out that although Saudi Arabia remains a good customer for British weaponry, referring to settling the pricing dispute on the latest batch of Typhoon jets, good customers do not always make good allies.

"Saudi Salafi preachers are encouraging young men (in Britain and throughout Europe) to take up arms against Shia Muslims and unbelievers. We worry about British 'jihadis' but it is Saudis," he noted.

Boyes article appeared a few days after it was revealed that al-Ariffi, a Wahaabi firebrand preacher from Saudi Arabia, was recruiting Jihadis from a British mosque at Cardiff, urging them to kill the Shi'as. Al-Ariffi was earlier banned from entering Switzerland, another European country that harbors all varieties of terrorists, because of his extremist views.

On June 15, the Times reported threats issued by the British citizens fighting with the terrorist group, ISIS, in Iraq. According to the Sunday Times, they promised that after they're done there, Britain is next. The message comes from three such fighters, all youngsters in their teens and twenties.

British Prime Minister David Cameron is also ringing alarm bells, asserting that Britain has become too tolerant for its own good, bringing about a rise in extremism. "In recent years we have been in danger of sending out a worrying message: that if you don't want to believe in democracy, that's fine; that if equality isn't your bag, don't worry about it; that if you're completely intolerant of others, we will still tolerate you," the PM asserted.

Missing, of course, from all this, is the British intelligence role with the Saudis in creating the terror spree. Perhaps that, too, will come.

War Spreading: Saudi Terrorist Blows Himself Up in a Beirut Hotel

A suicide bomber who blew himself up at a Beirut hotel, and his accomplice, who survived the blast, are nationals of Saudi Arabia, Lebanese officials said Thursday. A security and a judicial official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to talk to the media during an ongoing investigation, told The Associated Press that a preliminary probe shows the two attackers entered Lebanon with Saudi passports on June 11, and had paid for bookings in two other hotels besides the Duroy, where they came to stay. The suicide bomber blew himself up when security agents went in on a routine security check.

The blast occurred during the evening rush-hour, inside the Duroy Hotel, located near the Saudi Embassy in Raouche district, a posh neighborhood of apartment towers and upscale hotels perched on cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.

It was the third suicide bombing in Lebanon in less than a week and sparked fears of renewed violence in a country that has been deeply affected by the civil war in neighboring Syria, and the increasing efforts by Riyadh to destabilize the Hezbollah-led Lebanese political system. On Monday, a suicide bomber blew himself up near a checkpoint outside a cafe just after midnight in a primarily Shi'ite neighborhood where the militant Hezbollah group has a strong presence. The bombing killed one person and wounded 20. An al-Qaida-linked, Saudi-funded group, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, has warned that such attacks will continue as long as Hezbollah takes part in Syria's civil war alongside President Bashar Assad's troops.

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Kiev deploys Neo-Nazi Paramilitary against Political Opponents in Eastern Ukraine

By Clara Weiss

Global Research, June 28, 2014

World Socialist Web Site

The Ukrainian government is deploying paramilitary groups in close cooperation with the army against opposition in the eastern part of the country. This collaboration has been largely ignored by Western media. While the armed actions of pro-Russian separatists are dealt with at length in the media, there is no discussion of the fascist terror against political opponents of the Kiev regime and the civilian population.

In February, armed groups from the Right Sector and the fascist Svoboda party played a decisive role in the putsch against then-President Viktor Yanukovych. Svoboda was rewarded for this with several ministerial posts and high-ranking positions in the state. Although Svoboda’s presidential candidate, Oleh Tyahnybok, received only 1.2 percent of the vote in the May election, Svoboda continues to be prominently represented in the government.

These paramilitary groups operate with the official protection of the state. At the beginning of March, the parliament decided to build a 60,000-man national guard, principally made up of volunteers recruited from the so-called Maidan self-defense groups.

On April 13, Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov released a decree that allows the formation of special units for the purpose of countering separatist currents. Since then, a number of battalions, officially operating under the Ministry of the Interior, have been founded with the financial support of certain oligarchs.

The best-known is the Azov Battalion. The “Black Men,” as they have been termed on Russian-language web sites, have played a key role in several of the so-called “anti-terror operations” carried out by the Kiev government.

The Azov Battalion is based in Mariupol and is responsible for the majority of the brutal battles that have taken place there. According to official estimates, between May 10 and May 13 at least 20 people died as a result of violent confrontations in the city on the Azov Sea, whose population is 500,000. Although it is difficult to verify their authenticity, videos on YouTube purport to show that unarmed civilians in the area have been intentionally targeted.

Conflicts have continued in Mariupol. On June 13, the Azov forces, together with the battalion “Ukraina” and special units of the army, stormed the city center, which was held by separatists. In this operation, dozens of separatists were killed and wounded.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has claimed that the Azov Battalion was involved in the storming of the Russian embassy in Kiev.

Members of the battalion regularly boast on Twitter of killing civilians and separatists, giving numbers of alleged victims. Despite the fact that these announcements are not always easy to confirm, they say a great deal about the character of these fascist bands.

At the beginning of June, Yaroslav Honchar, a cofounder of the battalion, was removed from the leadership after he publicly accused the Azov forces of torturing people and stealing property belonging to ex-president Yanukovych’s family. According to Honchar, the battalion is largely made up of Right Sector members.

The Azov battalion was founded on May 5 by Oleh Lyashko, a member of parliament representing the ultra-right Radical Party, Igor Kryvoruchko, a leading member of Right Sector, and the well-known fascist Dmitro Korchynsky. According to Wikipedia, the battalion had about 300 members in June.

Many of its members came from the organization “Patriots of Ukraine,” which is part of the Right Sector. According to an Al-Jazeera article, the battalion is also affiliated with fascists from Russia, Italy and Sweden. What unifies the fighters is their adherence to National Socialism. New recruits to Azov are trained by the Interior Ministry before they are deployed in eastern Ukraine.

The battalion clearly enjoys the support of Washington and the regime. A YouTube video from Radio Free Europe, which is financed by the US Congress, shows Azov militiamen at a shooting practice.

The pro-government Ukrainian media reports positively about the paramilitary groups and celebrates them as “Heroes of Ukraine.” Members of the battalion take every opportunity to declare that they do not view their opponents as people and seek to “destroy” them.

According to accounts in the press, the battalion is financed by the oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi. With a total worth of $3 billion, Kolomoyskyi was the third richest man in Ukraine in 2012, according toForbes .

The Russian newspaper Correspondent estimates his worth at $6.2 billion. He is a co-owner of Private Bank, the largest bank in Ukraine. He is also one of the biggest operators in the Ukrainian oil, mining and air transport industries. At the beginning of March, Kolomoyskyi was named governor of the eastern Ukrainian state of Dnepopetrovsk.

Kolomoyskyi has politically and financially supported the pro-Western opposition for many years. He was one of the main financiers of the UDAR Party of boxer Vitali Klitschko. Previously, Kolomoyskyi was one of the most important oligarchs behind the opposition politician Yulia Tymoshenko. He also purportedly financed the head of Svoboda, Oleh Tyahnybok, who has, however, denied this in the Ukrainian press.

According to accounts in the Frankfurter Rundschau and the Kiev Post, Kolomoyskyi is behind the “Dnepr” and “Donbass” battalions, which spread terror in eastern Ukraine. These units recruit mainly from fascist organizations and former soldiers.

Dnepopetrovsk has been transformed under Kolomoyskyi into an organizational center of paramilitary forces used by the Kiev regime to combat opposition in the eastern part of the country.

The news agency Reuters reports that at the end of May, Kolomoyskyi used several dozen millions of US dollars to prevent the region from falling into the hands of separatists. With this money, a “National Defense Unit” was built comprising 15,000 men. These included 2,000 battle-ready soldiers divided into four battalions.

Igor Beresa, commander of the National Defense Unit, told Reuters that the battalions are accepting formal orders from the Ukrainian army and security forces, although the battalions receive an income twice as high and are better equipped.

Kolomoyskyi’s second-in-command, Boris Filatov, explained to Reuters: “We are doing all this in agreement with the central government. We coordinate and cooperate with Kiev. They accept that we are influential as a consolidating factor in the east.”

The Right Sector, which is also active as an independent formation in armed confrontations, shifted its headquarters to Dniepopetrovsk at the end of April. At the time, its leader, Dmitro Yarosh, boasted in an interview with Spiegel Online, “Our battalions are part of the new territorial defense. We have good relations with everybody, apart from the police.”

Yarosh regularly posts information about his operation and troops on Facebook and Twitter. At the end of May, the Right Sector assisted the Donbass Battalion in its efforts to take control of the eastern Ukrainian town of Karlivka. The village is still under siege.

There can be no doubt that the fascist battalions are responsible for a considerable proportion of the casualties of the civil war in Ukraine. According to United Nations reports, since May 7 alone, a total of 356 people in eastern Ukraine have been killed. The vast majority, 257, were civilians.

www.globalresearch.ca/kiev-deploys-neo-nazi-paramilitary-against-political-opponents-in-eastern-ukraine/5388968" data-title="Kiev deploys Neo-Nazi Paramilitary against Political Opponents in Eastern Ukraine">

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“Price-tag” attacks: High cost for Palestinian children living near settlers

Posted on: 25 Jun 2014 |

Ruweida Dar Khalil explains how four settlers set their home on fire in a “price-tag” attack. (DCIP/Dylan Collins)

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Editor’s note: This article is part one of a three-part series by Patrick O. Strickland* based on a DCI-Palestine report, which investigates the devastating impact on Palestinian children of growing up near Israeli settlements. Read part 2: Palestinian schoolchildren terrorized by settler vigilantes, soldiers. Read the DCI-Palestine report: Growing up between Israeli settlements and soldiers.

Ramallah, June 25, 2014—At 2 am on Nov. 14, 2013, Ruwaida Dar Khalil was warming a bottle for her baby son when she heard the screech of car tires outside her home in Sinjil in the occupied West Bank. She dismissed the noise as teenagers fooling around in their cars, and went back to feeding her son. The next thing she heard was the sound of her front door being kicked in.

Four adult male Israeli settlers were breaking into the tiny house that Ruwaida shares with her husband and five children. The men smashed windows with crowbars, before dousing the entrance in gasoline and setting it ablaze.

“[The fire] lit so quickly and spread fast,” Ruwaida told Defense for Children International Palestine.

Smoke began filling the kitchen and Ruwaida realized that she had to get her family out.

“I woke up my husband and kids … [my children] were so scared, terrified … they were crying,” she said.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
• "Price tag" attacks
• Settlements on the rise
• Childhood under siege
• Read part 2 in the series
• Read the full report

With the only escape route ablaze, Ruwaida and her husband, Khaled, had no option but to hide on the roof until help arrived.

Khaled and Ruwaida had left the United States to return to the West Bank with high hopes of raising their children in their homeland. They never anticipated that their home would be the target of four settler attacks.

Sinjil, the village they now live in with their three daughters and two sons, sits northeast of Ramallah. It is surrounded on three sides by an Israeli military base and two settlements. Soldiers are a common sight in the neighborhood, and Ruwaida finds it hard to understand why they didn’t come to help her family on the night of the attack.

“That night, there were Israeli police officers on the corner… and soldiers usually come to our place every night,” she said. “But… nobody showed up. Nobody cared.”

“Why didn’t anybody come to protect innocent children in this house?”

By the time Palestinian firefighters arrived and put out the fire, the roof had partially collapsed. All five of the children were treated for excessive smoke inhalation following the fire.

The next day, Khaled found the words “Regards from Eden, Revenge!” scrawled in spray paint on an outside wall. The message referred to Eden Attias, an Israeli soldier who had been stabbed to death on a bus in northern Israel by a Palestinian teenager a day earlier. The Israeli daily Haaretz reported that the arson may have been carried out to avenge his murder.

Acts of violence like the one carried out against the Dar Khalil family are known as “price tag” attacks – and they are on the rise. Between 2009 and 2011, “price tag” attacks increased 144 percent, according to theUnited Nations Office for Coordination of Human Affairs (OCHA).

“Price tag” attacks are carried out by fundamentalist Israeli settlers against Palestinians (and other populations or institutions they see as responsible) in retaliation for any action taken against the settlement enterprise in the West Bank. This can include actions initiated by the Israeli government and Israeli forces, for example demolition orders against unauthorized settlements. The Israeli government has condemned “price tag” attacks.

The Dar Khalil children continue to struggle with the after effects of the brutal attack.

They declined to speak to DCI-Palestine about the attack, but Khaled and Ruwaida described some of their problems.

Three-year-old Nisreen suffers from breathing difficulties, which started after the attack.

“She is always panting,” said Khaled. “The doctor told me she may have to have surgery.”

While Eman, 7, struggles to sleep at night and refuses to go to the bathroom alone.

“She won’t go take a sip of water, nothing, without me standing by her like a guard,” said Ruwaida. “She says, ‘No! No! No! The settlers are here.’ She always wakes up crying and thinks she heard settlers outside.”

Settlements on the rise

Since Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967, it has established some 125 settlements.

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem estimates that there are over 515,000 Israelis living in these Jewish-only settlements. The settlements are woven throughout the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, often dividing the cities, villages and refugee camps of the 2.65 million Palestinians who live there.

According to international law, Israel’s settlements in the West Bank are illegal. Israel, however, claims religious and historical right to the territory. It disputes that the Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids an occupying power from transferring its civilians to the territory occupied, applies to the West Bank. Meanwhile, the settlements are growing. In 2013, Israeli construction in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, increased by 130 percent compared with 2012, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics.

Stationed throughout the West Bank, Israeli soldiers, police and private security staff protect settler populations. Unlike Israeli civilians living across the Green Line, Israel’s pre-1967 boundary with the West Bank, many settlers carry government-issued arms. Ahead of the UN vote on Palestinian Authority statehood in September 2011, the Israeli government trained and further armed many settlers across the West Bank, according to Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz.

In this hyper-militarized environment, disproportionate physical and psychological violence is inflicted on Palestinian children.

Childhood under siege

Residents of Hebron, the most populous Palestinian city in the West Bank, complain of daily harassment from both Israeli soldiers and settlers. Between January 2012 and July 2013, OCHA estimates that 700 Palestinians were injured by Israeli soldiers or settlers in the city.

Hebron’s city center, including the historic Old City, the old market and the Ibrahimi Mosque, is under full Israeli military and civil control as part of a 1997 agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. At that time, the city was split into two areas, H1, which is under Palestinian Authority control and H2, controlled by the Israeli military.

In a unique situation, the Old City now permanently hosts upwards of 3,000 Israeli soldiers and some 600 settlers in four settlements. Thousands of Palestinian shops have been closed and homes evacuated in this once-bustling area of the city.

The Abu Shamsiya family lives in a modest two-room house in the heart of the H2 area. Imad, his wife Faiza, and their three sons and two daughters are the frequent victims of both settler and military violence.

“Everyone in this house has been attacked before,” Imad, 40, told DCI-Palestine.

But Imad’s 9-year-old daughter Marwa and son Mohammad, 12, have both been the victims of particularly disturbing attacks.

In 2011, Marwa, then 7, was snatched by a group of settlers as she made her way home from school. They held her down and set her hair on fire. An Israeli soldier quickly intervened and put out the fire, but it was more than a year before Marwa was able to sleep through the night without waking up and screaming.

In October 2013, Mohammad was on his way to the store to fetch bread for his mother when he was stopped by an Israeli soldier. Mohammad told DCI-Palestine that the soldier asked him if he had recently thrown rocks, then he slapped Mohammad across the face twice and threatened to kill him.

“I went to tell my mom,” Mohammad said. “When my mom came to ask the soldier why (he hit me), he slammed her against the wall. When my dad went later, the soldier told him he hit me because he felt like it.”

Mohammad insists he is “used to the violence now,” but his mother, Faiza, told DCI-Palestine that all of her children are frightened at night.

*Patrick O. Strickland is a freelance contributor to Defense for Children International Palestine.