by Nabi Saleh Solidarity, 28 August 2015
Israeli Occupation Forces invaded Nabi Saleh today and attempted to kidnap a 12 year old boy. However, Palestinian women and girls managed to overpower the soldier and free the boy before he was taken away. Israeli Occupation Forces also arrested an 18 year old Palestinian youth.
Video by Bilal Tamimi
Photo by Shadi Hatem
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Photos by Bilal Tamimi
David Reeb’s video: 10 April 2015
By Text and Photos by Popular Struggle Coordination Committee: 10 April 2015
Iyad Al Tamimi, was injured and brused due to his falling off a two meters high wall as a result of heavy gas bombs thrown at demonstrators by the Israeli occupation army. The heavy gas bombs caused the suffocation of tens of demonstrators. Confrontations between the Occupation army and demonstrators continued around the area of the Israeli military tower located at the entrance of the village. Israeli soldiers arrested three young palestinian men and children:
Bassel Thalji Al Rimawi – 19 Years old
Osaid Hussam Faqih – 15 Years old
Amir Samir Hjaiji – 16 Years old
Those arrested were released, however Bassel Rimawi is still detained
On Friday, 13 March 2015 – Israeli Occupation Forces once again attacked the regular Friday demonstration against Israel’s occupation in Nabi Saleh. One person was injured due to IOF fire and 3 women were arrested and beaten during the demonstration by the IOF: Boshra Tamimi, Shireen and Tali Shapiro.
Tali Shapiro reports that she was released after some hours (due to the fact that she is an Israeli Jewish citizen) however, the IOF continue to detain the Palestinian arrestees, Boshra Tamimi for 4 days and Shireen for 24 hours.
Photos by Bilal Tamimi/Tamimi Press
Boshra Tamimi
Tali Shapiro being arrested
Child confronting Israeli soldiers after arrest of women
Mohammed Tamimi after the arrest of his mother Boshra is comforted by his father, Naji Tamimi
Injury for IOF fire
On March 11/12, Israeli Occupation Forces invaded and raided Nabi Saleh, arresting four men: Bahaa Tamimi (24); Eyad Tamimi (47); Odai Tamimi (24); and Osaid Tamimi (20).
During the raid and arrest, Israeli Occupation Forces terrorised the village and families of the arrested men. Nabi Saleh youth attempted to repeal the Occupation Forces. The Occupation Forces opened fire with teargas and sound grenades. No injuries were reported.
Photos by Manal Tamimi:
The house of Bahaa Tamimi it was invaded by the IOF and he was arrested
Israeli Occupation Forces locked down Nabi Saleh from the early hours of the morning , preventing vehicles from entering the village. During the weekly demonstration the IOF arrested one young man and assaulted others when they attacked the village. Israeli Occupation Forces targeted the peaceful march, which included women and children, with teargas, rubber coated steel bullets injuring many. Walid Daifallah Tamimi, 18 was arrested from inside a shop.
The demonstration protested against the torture and murder of Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir, who was kidnapped from Occupied East Jerusalem by illegal Israeli settlers.
Video by Israel Puterman
Video by David Reeb
Rani Burnat spends every Friday afternoon engulfed in tear gas. For the past nine years, his hometown of Bil’in, a small Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank, has held weekly demonstrations against the Israeli occupation, and Burnat photographs the clashes from his battered wheelchair.
Friday protests in the West Bank are hardly unique to Bil’in. The village of Nabi Saleh protests against the seizure of its only water source by an illegal Israeli settlement nearby, while people in Kufr Qaddoum protest Israel’s blockade of its main road to the nearby city of Nablus. Like Bil’in, residents of the villages of Al-Walaja and Ni’lin protest against Israel’s separation wall, which runs through their land.
Media outlets don’t cover these protests, so people like Burnat have stepped in and taken on the role of citizen journalist for their communities. With no formal training, they document the struggles of their fellow villagers, filming and photographing clashes and posting what they record online.
“My hope is that we will become liberated and then we will throw all the cameras away,” Burnat tells VICE News. “But something tells me the occupation won’t end, and I will continue fighting through my camera.”
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Burnat was part of the Palestinian resistance movement long before he started taking photos. On the first day of the second intifada in 2000, he was shot in the neck by an Israeli sniper while protesting the Israeli occupation on the streets of Ramallah.
“They declared me a martyr,” Burnat says. “The Palestinian media reported me as killed because my injuries were so bad that they assumed I would die. The next day, I was still alive and they moved me from the hospital in Ramallah to a hospital in Jordan. I spent six months in the Jordanian hospital, three of them in a coma.”
Burnat photographs a protester in Bil’in. Photo by Sheren Khalel
Burnat is now paralyzed from the chest down. He is confined to a wheelchair, has lost much of his ability to speak, and has normal motor function in only one hand. He wanted to continue participating in the resistance, but he needed to find another way to do it.
When Bil’in began its Friday protests, he found it.
“The army started to confiscate land and properties in Bil’in to begin building the separation wall,” he says. “It was then that I decided to be a photographer.”
His photography helped the village win a rare victory: After six years of demonstrating every Friday, Bil’in succeeded in changing the path of the wall, reclaiming half of the village’s land that had been taken. Protests continue in hopes of reclaiming the rest.
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Burnat says he’s been shot with rubber-coated bullets and tear-gas canisters more than 10 times since he was confined to his wheelchair. Because he has no feeling from the chest down, he must check his body after every protest in case he’s been shot without realizing it.
According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), Palestinian journalists like Burnat are commonly targeted by soldiers, even though they often wear clothing identifying themselves as press.
“There is no question that Palestinian journalists are more at risk of arrest, harassment, or you name it than an international journalist,” said Bill Van Esveld, senior researcher at HRW. “And they are much more likely to be subjected to Israeli military law rather than civil law.”
Bilal Tamimi, a village journalist in Nabi Saleh, has experienced this first hand. Like his fellow journalists around the occupied West Bank, he is not accredited with any media organization, which means no company advocates on his behalf when he is arrested for filming soldiers — which is actually legal under Israeli law — and he and his family are responsible for posting bail and paying any fines or hospital bills that result from his work.
Tamimi says he’s been arrested four times, and has been beaten on several occasions. His family endures Israeli military raids in the middle of the night so often that his teenage children sleep with their shoes on.
“They target me with tear gas canisters and stun grenades, and many times they’ve pushed me and beat me to keep me away,” Tamimi says. “But of course I believe that what I am doing for the village here is very important and that I should stay close to [the soldiers] so I can document everything.”
Al-Qaddoumi covers protests in Kufr Qaddoum. Photo by Sheren Khalel
While Bil’in’s popular resistance got results, Tamimi’s village of Nabi Saleh has gotten attention. It’s been the focus of a New York Times Magazine story and the documentary Thank God It’s Friday, and it has hosted political figures from around the world.
Many in the town credit its notoriety to Tamimi and the small team of volunteers he has gathered under the umbrella of the Tamimi Press.
“Before in Nabi Saleh, if you googled us you would find just information on the prophet Saleh, because Nabi means prophet in Arabic,” Tamimi tells us. “But now if you google Nabi Saleh you will find millions and millions of films and reports, pictures, articles — everything.”
Tamimi Press regularly posts updates on its website and its Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube accounts. It also sends updates to local news outlets and human rights organizations.
“Tamimi Press is just incredible — they have an entire do-it-yourself news service that they created themselves to get information out,” Van Esveld tells VICE News. “They [village journalists] often have the first information on something that is going on, which is extremely important. They have access to witnesses, they have stories told direct from the ground, information that has not been filtered through spokespeople.”
In 2011, the small village of Kufr Qaddoum, nestled between hills in the north West Bank and surrounded by illegal Israeli settlements, was cut off from the city of Nablus — and the jobs it provided to many Kufr Qaddoum residents — when the Israeli army set up a blockade on the road out of the village. Residents protested, but there was almost no media coverage. Kamaal al-Qaddoumi was one of the villagers affected, and he found himself taking on the mantle of unofficial village photographer.
Just a typical Friday for Burnat. Photo by Sheren Khalel
“I started the same year the protests here started,” he says. “I noticed there was no media, nobody cared about what was happening in Kufr Qaddoum. So I started to take pictures and put them on the Internet to let people see.”
Like Burnat and Tamimi, Quddoumi believes his role is to show the world what’s happening in his small area of the occupied West Bank. But the men are more than just documentarians. For starters, footage village journalists shoot is frequently used in court to get Palestinian protestors released from detention after being wrongfully arrested. In addition, the presence of their cameras during clashes can often protect their fellow villagers from increased army backlash.
That’s one reason why the Israeli human rights group B’tselem launched its Camera Project to provide free cameras and advice to budding citizen journalists in the Occupied Territories. Tamimi, who was one of the project’s first recipients, says the presence of cameras in Nabi Saleh makes soldiers think twice about how much force they use.
“If they know that there will not be a punishment or that no one will know about what they are doing because there are no cameras, they will be very tough with the people, and they would be much worse at demonstrations — and all the time really,” Tamimi says.
While the Coalition for the Protection of Journalists tells VICE News that they consider Burnat, Tamimi, Qaddoumi and others like them journalists, all three seem torn between the identities of journalist and protestor. Tamimi proudly wears a high-visibility vest which, rather than having the word Press emblazoned on it, states: We will refuse to stay silent.
“Everybody has their own role in the resistance,” Quddoumi says. “Some people throw stones, some people take video, some people take pictures, some people help with medical things. What they do is for Palestine. Me taking pictures is like the same as another throwing stones.”
Video by Bilal Tamimi of the night raid and invasion of Nabi Saleh last night (24 April) – 2 residents arrest and many houses damaged.
Palestinians, accompanied by Israeli and international activists gathered in Martyrs Square at the centre of Nabi Saleh, in order to mark the weekly Friday demonstration against the occupation and land annexation. Demonstrators marched down the street and into the nearby valley, reaching close to al-Qaws spring (expropriated by the settlement of Halamish) when they were attacked by tear gas and stun grenades, hurled by IOF soldiers attempting to disperse the march. No major injuries reported. However, two Palestinian female activists and three journalists were detained at the entrance to the village. While the journalists were eventually released, the Palestinian women were arrested and taken to police interrogation.
Israeli high school refuseniks
11th March 2014 | International Solidarity Movement | Nabi Saleh, Occupied Palestine
*Read in other languages: Bulgarian/ French/ German/ Italian
Updated 16th March: The Nabi Saleh three have now been freed from Ofer prison. Thank you for all your support, Jihad, Mahmud, and Rami Tamimi are now at home with their families. However, Israeli forces yesterday arrested Baha and Oday Tamimi also from Nabi Saleh, we hope you can continue your support for those now imprisoned. More information about these new arrests will be posted as soon as it is available.
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Updated 13th March: $1500 are still needed to cover the bail for the release of Jihad, Mahmud and Rami Tamimi from Israel’s Ofer prison.
Please write to Bassem Tamimi at ba.tamimi@hotmail.com specifying the amount, so we can allocate it directly for the release of the Nabi Saleh three. Please follow the link to make your donation!
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Jihad, Mahmud and Rami, residents of Nabi Saleh, have been imprisoned for three weeks now and need your support to be released.
An Israeli military judge ruled that six demonstrators who were kidnapped from their homes three weeks ago, could be released on bail of 2500 shekels each. With the help of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee and the villagers, three of the prisoners, Fadel Tamimi (54) Mohammed Tamimi (24) Basel Tamimi (16) have already been released. We need your help to raise the remaining 7000 shekels to release Jihad Tamimi (25) Mahmud Tamimi (21) Rami Tamimi (36). Any amount will help.
The six have been accused of throwing stones at the Israeli military. The “evidence” presented against them is edited pictures of them participating in a demonstration- not throwing stones- and a testimony of a solider who says “the people who we took pictures of threw stones.” They were arrested the 18th of February when the villagers of Nabi Saleh were awakened once again by about a hundred soldiers invading their village.
Since residents of Nabi Saleh began demonstrating against the confiscation of their land and spring by the illegal Israel settlement of Halamish, five years ago, such night raids have become a regular occurrence.
Since the protests started, 155 people have been arrested for demonstrating, including fifty children and fifteen women. 500 people were also injured, 45 per cent of them children. Two of the demonstrators Rushdie and Mustafa Tamimi were murdered by the Israeli military in Nabi Saleh and Muaataz Washaha who participated in the demonstrations in Nabi Saleh and was executed in Beir zeit last month.
Please, donate for the Nabi Saleh three to be released. You can do it through PayPal or by bank transfer to: Basem Tamimi bank of Jordan Al Bireh branch Iban number PS13BJOR005010023012014133000.
Free the Nabi Saleh three!
Video by Bilal Tamimi
Around 2 a.m. the Zionist Israeli forces violently raided the village of Nabi Saleh searching brutally in the houses for ‘wanted’ people by using an album of photos to identify youth from the village.. 5 people were arrested:
Photos from the wall of Tamimi Press Office and Media were also confiscated. The photos were used to show visitors the violations and abuses carried out by the Israeli Forces against the people and the village of Nabi Saleh.
***Update on arrests in Nabi Saleh***
Muhammad ‘Atallah al-Tamimi, who was arrested last night at his home in Nabi Saleh, was released today on 1000NIS bail. The hearing for Basel Tamimi, 16, arrested during the same raid, is set for tomorrow. However, his father was detained after a verbal altercation with an IOF officer. In addition, Islam Dar Ayub al-Tamimi was sentenced today to 15 months in the occupation prison.
Nabi Saleh Solidarity 