The Palestine thread

[Ball DeBeaver]

In the immortal words of Randy Quaid in "Independence Day" just before he flies his plane with an armed missile into the alien mothership (See the similarity?  ).......... Hello Boys......... I'MMMM BAAACK!

At around 7:30 pm on Wednesday 12 December 2012 a soldier of the Israeli army shot dead Mohammad Salayme, killing him with two bullets to the body and head in the Salayme neigbourhood of Hebron near to the Ibrahimi mosque. Mohammad had spent the day in school and was on his way to buy some cake for him and his family to celebrate his birthday, when suddenly his life was cut short.

Another Palestinian man was shot with live ammunition and injured, he was taken to a hospital in the city. The Israeli military claimed Mohammad Salayme was carrying a fake gun, therefore shot him. Mohammad's father who rushed to administer first aid to his son said he saw no fake gun on him. Sound bombs, tear gas and rubber bullets were fired at Palestinians who tried to help the dying teenager.

The Israeli military closed off all the streets around the area where Mohammed was killed to prevent any journalists from reaching the incident. A car carrying four journalists was hit with several rounds of live ammunition and the journalists were stopped and forced from their car. The journalists, two from Youth Against Settlements, one from Reuters and one from Palmedia were forced to strip to their underwear in the cold evening air. The soldiers took their cameras and physically beat up the journalists resulting in them needing hospital treatment. A filmmaker who works for the Israeli peace group Btselem who lives close to the shooting was surrounded by 12 soldiers, beaten up and arrested. Officers from the District Coordination Office For Military Affairs informed local activists the cameras would be returned to them tomorrow after being checked for evidence.

The Israeli military flooded the city with an enormous amount of soldiers who attempted to clear the streets in a very aggressive manner, throwing sound bombs into groups of remonstrating Palestinians, shooting tear gas and rubber coated steel bullets. This behaviour only antagonised the residents of Hebron turning the tense situation into outright confrontation as clashes erupted throughout the city. The areas of Salayme, Bab Al-Zawiya, Qtoun and Dar Al Binzaid all echoed to the sound of live ammunition, concussion grenades, tear gas and rubber coated steel bullets. Clashes were reported in the nearby city of Yatta and in Dura.

Tensions in Hebron are rising as the Israeli occupation forces are using increased levels of violence in the city ever since the recent Israeli assualt on Gaza. Hamdi Alfalah was killed on November 20th and many people have been injured. Hebron will see another funeral on Thursday 13th of December.

http://palsolidarity.org/2012/12/israeli-forces-kill-teenager-on-his-17th-birthday-in-hebron/

Still posting lies I see. It's not like you to jump on the bandwagon and just blame Israel for murdering this "child."


http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/163262


Video Depicts Terrorist who Attacked Border Police in Hevron

IDF releases a video showing the terrorist who attacked a Border Police officer in Hevron and was killed by a female officer.


AAFont Size
By Elad Benari
First Publish: 12/18/2012, 1:15 AM


  http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ybw9gT1oFpE


The IDF Spokesperson's Unit released a video on Monday which shows the 17-year-old Palestinian Authority Arab terrorist who attacked a Border Police officer in Hevron last Wednesday.

The terrorist was ultimately killed by a female officer who was on hand and shot the teen when she sensed that her fellow officer was in danger. An investigation found that the 17-year-old attacker's gun had contained no bullets, but as the officer told interviewers, "I thought that my partner would die if I didn't act within seconds. There was no time to confirm that the gun was real."



PA Arabs, outraged over the killing of the terrorist, responded by rioting throughout Judea and Samaria.

The 20-year-old officer who shot the attacker faced death threats. Arab-language websites published her picture and social media users were calling for retaliation.



Poor wee Muhammad was only out buying a cake for his granny / celebrating his 17th birthday (depends which lying piece of pal media you read) only to come up against a premenstrual border guard, who shot him for no reason.  I mean, what civilised society tramples on a young mans rights and doesn't let you beat a border guard with a fake gun? Barbaric, isn't it....... 
If you watch the video, you'll see that the poor child Muhammad was at least the same size as the border guard he attacked, and only 3 years younger than the guard who eventually dispatched him.
Payback's a bitch, ain't it.

[JimStynes]

3/10 for that effort BDB

[seafoid]

Ball de Beaver is back

But he had no balls during the recent all out assault on Gaza.

Where was he when Israel was murdering Palestinian children in jigtime?
That is when Israel really needed his spin. And he was nowhere to be seen.   

[give her dixie]

The BBC documentary, "Shalom Belfast", in which I took part, will be screened tonight at 10-45 on BBC Northern Ireland. For those who can't receive BBC NI, you can watch it on SKY, Channel 953, or on Cable, Channel 863.

The BBC refused to screen it during the recent Gaza massacre, and have decided to show it tonight with zero prior notice. When you watch it you will understand why. Plus, with all the news recently about flags, this show puts some perspective on the current situation.......

Please share this information and encourage your friends to watch it.

Many thanks


http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nw0x7

[Ball DeBeaver]

Ball de Beaver is back

But he had no balls during the recent all out assault on Gaza.

Where was he when Israel was murdering Palestinian children in jigtime?
That is when Israel really needed his spin. And he was nowhere to be seen.

If you have any questions as to where I was, then ask the mods.

[give her dixie]

"Shalom Belfast" about to start in 10 minutes on BBC 1 NI.

For anyone outside NI, click on the following link to watch from anywhere in the world

http://www.filmon.com/#BBC-1-North-Ireland

[fitzroyalty]

"Shalom Belfast" about to start in 10 minutes on BBC 1 NI.

For anyone outside NI, click on the following link to watch from anywhere in the world

http://www.filmon.com/#BBC-1-North-Ireland

Wow. There are some loons out there. Did you ever encounter that gentleman McKnight? 

[give her dixie]

If Israel has those people for friends, then they don't need any more enemies !!

[give her dixie]

The BBC documentary, "Shalom Belfast", that was shown on Wednesday night is now available to watch on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EpvZMbhG5Dc

[muppet]

I have long believed that the only solution is to give both sides a 100 short range nuclear war-heads, enough to blow each other off the face of the earth. That would focus the minds on more productive talks.

[give her dixie]

I have long believed that the only solution is to give both sides a 100 short range nuclear war-heads, enough to blow each other off the face of the earth. That would focus the minds on more productive talks.

The Israeli's already have 500 nuclear war heads......

[muppet]

I have long believed that the only solution is to give both sides a 100 short range nuclear war-heads, enough to blow each other off the face of the earth. That would focus the minds on more productive talks.

The Israeli's already have 500 nuclear war heads......

They are the only nuclear power never to have officially admitted having nuclear weapons. But I take your point, give the Palestinians a similar amount but put someone smart (find a Mandela) in charge of them.

[JimStynes]

The BBC documentary, "Shalom Belfast", that was shown on Wednesday night is now available to watch on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EpvZMbhG5Dc

That was an interesting watch I thought, makes Norn Iron look even more ridiculous!! There is no hope for that crowd in the Rangers Supporters Club, the fella saying he would die for Israel  The fella who turn Jewish was the worst though, totally brainwashed. "Israel cant do anymore for them, they even let them have their own functioning banks".

Couldnt really tell who the fella's support weighed towards though. Seemed to be keeping on everyones good side or maybe he just genuinely didnt care.

[year til sunday]

The BBC documentary, "Shalom Belfast", that was shown on Wednesday night is now available to watch on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EpvZMbhG5Dc

@32mins, "i am jack's discarded circumcision"

serious amount of glue heads in this docu

[give her dixie]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/23/bethlehem-christians-feel-squeeze-settlements

Bethlehem Christians feel the squeeze as Israeli settlements spread

Amid plastic bags snagged on gorse bushes, rusting hulks of cars in a breakers yard and a few shabby trailers, traces of a biblical landscape are still to be found on a hillside between the ancient cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem. A couple of donkeys are tethered to a gnarled olive tree; nearby, sheep and goats bleat as they huddle against the chill December air.

But this terrain will soon be covered in concrete after the authorisation last week of the construction of more than 2,600 homes in Givat Hamatos, the first new Israeli settlement to be built since 1997.

It lies between two existing settlements: Gilo, home to 40,000 people, sits atop one hill; to its east, on another hill, stands Har Homa, whose population is around 20,000, with further expansion in the pipeline. Both are largely built on Bethlehem land.

Givat Hamatos will form a strategic link between these twin towns, further impeding access between Bethlehem and the intended capital of Palestine, East Jerusalem, just six miles away.

Israel considers these and other settlements across the Green Line to be legitimate suburbs of Jerusalem, which it claims as the unified, indivisible capital of the Jewish state. Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and official bodies have announced a spate of expansion plans in recent weeks.

In the birthplace of Jesus, the impact of Israeli settlements and their growth has been devastating. In a Christmas message, the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said Bethlehem was enduring a "choking reality".

He added: "For the first time in 2,000 years of Christianity in our homeland, the Holy Cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem have been completely separated by Israeli settlements, racist walls and checkpoints."

Bethlehem is now surrounded by 22 settlements, including Nokdim, where the hardline former Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman lives, and Neve Daniel, home to public diplomacy minister Yuli Edelstein.

The city is further hemmed in by the vast concrete and steel separation barrier, bypasses connecting settlements with Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and Israeli military zones. With little room to expand, it is now more densely populated than Gaza, according to one Palestinian official.

In Beit Sahour – the site on the eastern edge of Bethlehem where, according to Christian tradition, angels announced the birth of Jesus to shepherds in a field – William Sahouri is feeling the squeeze. Ten years ago, he moved into a housing project designated for young Christian families, which overlooks fields and hills where sheep once grazed.

Now most of that land is on the other side of the separation barrier, inaccessible to Palestinians. Har Homa – which, like all settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, is illegal under international law – is rapidly spreading down the hill. Cranes are at work on new apartment blocks; bulldozers are flattening land for new roads and buildings.

In contrast, Sahouri's home, along with others in the neighbourhood, is under an Israeli demolition order. It was issued in 2002 soon after the apartments were built without a permit, which is almost impossible to get in areas of the West Bank under full Israeli military control. After protests, the order was frozen but not lifted.

"It's like sitting on a bomb," says Sahouri, who estimates his family's presence in the area stretches back more than 300 years. "We don't know when it will be blown. At any moment they could come with bulldozers and heavy machinery and everything will be gone."

But, he adds, gesturing across to Har Homa, "the Israelis can build 1,000 homes in three months. In 10 years, they build a city, while we have to build stone by stone."

Residents of Beit Sahour – whose 15,000 population is 80% Christian – say settlers have targeted another nearby spot. A former Israeli military base at Ush Ghurab is visited almost weekly by hardliners from settlements deep in the West Bank, who have repainted the abandoned buildings, planted trees and raised Israeli flags. The site is now known as Shdema to the settlers, who hold regular meetings and activities on the hilltop.

Local Palestinians fear that the visitors will begin to sleep at the former base, then expand the site with additional caravans, followed by the provision of services – electricity, water, roads – and eventually permanent homes. This is a familiar pattern of how radical settlements, unauthorised by the Israeli state, take shape.

"This area is being highly targeted," says local Palestinian activist George Rishmawi. "Experience tells us this is how settlements start – with the actions of fanatics."

On the other side of Bethlehem, another mainly Christian community is also facing a battle, this one against the planned route of the separation barrier. Under present proposals it will cut off 58 families, plus a monastery and convent, from their land. The monks and nuns of Cremisan have joined forces with residents to fight a legal battle over the route, which will be decided in the Israeli courts early next year.

"The wall will confiscate nearly all our land," says Samira Qaisieh, whose house on the edge of Beit Jala was built by her husband's family almost a century ago. Its vine-covered terrace looks across the valley to Gilo, the Israeli settlement, built on land she says was owned by her grandfather. "Israel says it is doing all this in the name of security. But really they just want a land without [Palestinian] people."

Qaisieh is thinking of leaving unless the barrier is re-routed. "There is no work here. If we lose our land, what is there to stay for? What is the future for my children?"

About two-thirds of the 400-mile West Bank barrier is complete; 85% of its route runs inside the West Bank, swallowing almost 8.5% of Palestinian land. In 2004, the International Court of Justice ruled it was illegal and that construction must stop.

The wall already snakes around most of Bethlehem, its 8m-high concrete slabs casting a deep shadow, both literally and metaphorically. At the Christmas Tree restaurant, where there are almost no takers for the "Quick Lunches" on offer, business has slowed to a standstill since the wall blocked what was once the main Jerusalem-Bethlehem road. Scores of shops along the closed-off artery have shut down altogether.

A few hundred metres along from the empty restaurant, a long steel-caged corridor leading through multiple turnstiles to a checkpoint is the main exit from the city for Palestinians wishing to go to Jerusalem. The Israel Defence Forces issues thousands of extra permits to Christian Palestinians to allow them to visit holy sites in Jerusalem over Christmas, but the lack of routine access has had a dire impact on businesses and employment rates.

Bethlehem has one of the highest rates of unemployment of all West Bank cities, at 18%, says Vera Baboun, who was elected as its first female mayor in October. "We are a strangulated city, with no room for expansion due to the settlements and the wall."

In a booklet to mark Christmas 2012, Kairos Palestine, a Christian alliance, says: "Land confiscation, as well as the influx of Israeli settlers, suggest that there will be no future for Palestinians (Christian or Muslim) in [this] area. In this sense, the prospect of a clear 'solution' grows darker every day."

Over recent decades Christians have left Bethlehem in their thousands, and now are a minority in a city they once dominated. In 2008 Christians accounted for 28% of Bethlehem city's population of about 25,000. The daily grind of living under occupation, with few opportunities, little hope and the violence of the Palestinian uprising 10 years ago are cited as the chief reasons for departure. But in the past few years the flood of emigrants has slowed. "We are here, and we will remain here, to help our new state become a reality," says Nora Carmi of Kairos.

In Beit Jala, parish priest Father Ibrahim Shomali, who leads open-air prayers under olive trees at sunset every Friday to protest at the planned route of the barrier around the Cremisan monastery, fears its construction could lead to a fresh wave of Christian departures. "People are leaving," he says wearily. "But some of us will stay, to pray and resist."