Thursday 26 April 2012

Urif – The brutal legacy of Yitzhar settlement


- As written by Christopher Landau

Urif is a Palestinian town in the Nablus Governorate of the northern occupied West Bank, located 13 kilometers South of Nablus. The town has a population of just under 3000 inhabitants and is overlooked by the illegal Israeli colony of Yitzhar. Four days ago (Sunday, April 22nd 2012) Urif’s boys school was attacked by mask-wearing settlers supported by four IOF (Israeli occupying forces) soldiers who used tear-gas, sound bombs and live ammunition against unarmed Palestinian children.

The settlers were led by the head of security for the Yitzhar colony, a man that despite being suspected in the murder of a resident of Urif in 2004, (a killing that nobody has yet been charged with) continues to lead brutal assaults against the defenseless civilian population of six Palestinian towns in the lands surrounding Yitzhar, namely in; Burin, Huwara, Madma, Assria Al – Kalibya, Ein nabous and Urif.

The attack began when the head of security from Yitzhar and a number of masked settlers approached the school from a hill that overlooked the building. “The children were sitting their mock exams” said Arif, a member of the local popular committee: “The settlers used foul language and began throwing stones at the windows of the school”.The settlers were soon joined by four uniformed IOF soldiers who did nothing to stop the abuse and stones hurled towards the school: “When the army came they were supposed to stop the settlers coming to the school, in fact the opposite happened, there was chaos.” exclaims Arif. As a number of Palestinian youths approached the Israeli settlers and soldiers on the hill armed only with stones, the IOF soldiers threw tear gas canisters down towards them and the school, one of which landed on the roof where a member of the Israeli human rights group B’tselem, Adil Safadi, was filming the attack.

As the Palestinian youths attempted to throw stones towards the soldiers and settlers they were met with a barrage of teargas (after the attack the teachers from the school collected sixty tear gas canisters), a small number of sound grenades and at least thirty rounds of live ammunition fired directly over their heads. In the video of the incident that ISM volunteers were shown, the screams of the children and the loud report of an assault rifle being fired in fully automatic mode can clearly be heard. At one point an IOF soldier takes aim with his M16 directly at a Palestinian youth out of camera shot. The sustained assault lasted for around an hour before the settlers decided to leave with their IOF minders in tow.

Whilst some children hid in their classrooms during the attack (under the watchful eye of their teachers) many rushed directly to their homes, many were exposed to large amounts of tear-gas and required medical attention. The children of Urif’s boys school, aged between 13 and 18 have been subjected to this kind of brutality on a regular basis since the founding of the school which sits on the outskirts of the village and is thus vulnerable to these kind of attacks.

Many of the older kids that attend the school were in the process of studying for their final years examinations which take place in early May. A sad coincidence as it is in April of every year that the settlers mount their most sustained and brutal attacks upon the surrounding villages. “You can’t imagine the loss we have suffered as a result of this settlement” says Arif, “we would like to live in peace and prosperity, but that is something we cannot gain. The settlers are very aggressive, there is no word in the dictionary to describe them.”

This is not the first time the settlers supported by the military have attacked the school. Around a year previously they attempted and failed to burn it down. ISM saw pictures that showed the charred remains of one classroom that was severely damaged during the attack.

A brief history of incursions from Yitzhar into Urif and surrounding villages

All that follows was told to us by Arif and the mayor of Urif in our recent visit: 

The illegal colony of Yitzah was founded in 1982 but it wasn’t until the beginning of 2000 that it began to aggressively expand into the surrounding Palestinian lands, annexing vast swaths of land illegally and barring access to the Palestinian farmers, shepherds and villagers that have lived and worked the land for countless generations.

The village of Urif is a mere 1500 meters away from the Israeli colony, since 2000, over 2200 dunam’s (roughly equivalent to 220000 square meters) have been stolen by the nearby settlement. In addition, four thousand olive trees cultivated by the village have been uprooted and burnt by settlers in the past four years.

The villagers of Urif have no access to running water, instead they rely on a small number of ancient wells. Two years ago, members of the village were dismayed to find tear gas canisters had been dropped into one of the wells by unknown settlers, poisoning the water supply.

Any attempt to expand infrastructure in the village is also met with settler attacks. ISM volunteers were shown the remains of a house that had been under construction before it was attacked and completely dismantled: “Late at night they launch attacks on the residents in this area” said Arif pointing to the rubble strewn skeleton of the destroyed house. A tractor and a number of cars belonging to residents of the village had also been destroyed in a series of recent arson attacks.

Settlers have shot through the windows of a number of the homes. Hebrew graffiti saying “revenge” was scrawled across one residents house. The widespread “price tagging” of agricultural land, i.e. the destruction of crops has lead to a vast “wasteland” between the outskirts of Urif and Yitzhar. Hundreds of goats, sheep and a few horses have been stolen.

This is not even to mention the violence towards the villagers themselves. Arif reports that hundreds of villagers have been injured since 2000, with as many as 40 serious injuries (many of which were gunshot wounds) and as mentioned earlier, one murder.

The combined effects of this systematic assault on the residents of Urif, their way of life, economy and civil society, is akin to a form of ethnic cleansing. A stark indicator of the impact that the measures have had on the town is that unemployment in Urif  is as high as 40%. Many people simply cannot survive under these conditions and are thus forced to abandon the village of their birth, leaving behind their friends, family and identity.

(For a photo gallery of the IOF training and arming Israeli settlers see here -
http://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/israel-arms-trains-illegal-settlers-for-rampage-in-occupied-palestine-in-pictures/ )