Neve Gordon writing at Antiwar.com:
In a recent report, the Palestinian human rights organizations Stop the Wall and Addameer document the forms of repression Israel has deployed against villages that have resisted the annexation of their land. The two rights groups show that once a village decides to struggle against the annexation barrier, the entire community is punished. In addition to home demolitions, curfews, and other forms of movement restriction, the Israeli military forces consistently uses violence against the protesters – and most often targets the youth – beating, tear-gassing, and deploying both lethal and "non-lethal" ammunition against them.
Since 2004, 19 people, about half of them children, have been killed in protests against the barrier. The rights groups found that in four small Palestinian villages – Bil’in, Ni’lin, Ma’sara, and Jayyous – 1,566 Palestinians have been injured in demonstrations against the wall. In five villages alone, 176 Palestinians have been arrested for protesting against the annexation, with children and youth specifically targeted during these arrest campaigns. The actual numbers of those who were injured and arrested are no doubt greater, considering that these are just the incidents that took place in a few villages.
Each number has a name and a story. Consider, for example, the arrest of 16-year-old Mohammed Amar Hussan Nofal, who was detained along with about 65 other people from his village Jayyous on Feb. 18, 2009. According to his testimony, he was initially interrogated for two and a half hours in the village school.
"They asked me why I participated in the demonstrations, but I tried to deny [that I had]. Then they asked me why I threw a Molotov cocktail [at] them. I said I never had, which was true. My parents were there and witnessed [what happened]. They can confirm I never [threw a Molotov cocktail]. I later confessed to [having been at] demonstrations, but not [to having] thrown a Molotov cocktail."
After being beaten for refusing to hold up a paper with numbers and Hebrew words on it in order to be photographed, Nofal was sent to Kedumim and interrogated for several more hours. During this interrogation, Captain Faisal (a pseudonym of a secret service officer) tried to recruit the teenager to become a collaborator.
"The captain threatened that he would arrest my parents and my whole family if I did not collaborate. I said they could arrest [my family] any time, [but] it would be worse to become a spy. He then said they would confiscate my family’s permits so they could not pick olives."
Nofal’s only crime was protesting against the expropriation of his ancestral lands. He spent three months in prison, during which time the Civil Administration decided to punish his family as well and refused to renew their permits to work in Israel.
