The following is a press release from the nonviolent protest movement against Israeli occupation. Pollak is a spokesperson for the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee.
Bassem Tamimi, coordinator of the Nabi Saleh [West Bank village] popular committee, was arrested when dozens of soldiers raided his house at noon today beating his wife and daughter in the process. Only yesterday the military court had ordered the indefinite remand of Naji Tamimi, another member of the Nabi Saleh population committee.
Minutes after Bassem Tamimi entered his home to prepare for a meeting with foreign diplomats, dozens of Israeli soldiers stormed his house at the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh and arrested him. The soldiers tried to prevent Tamimi's wife, Nariman Tamimi, from filming the arrest, hitting her and trying to grab the camera from her. When she passed the camera to her 10 year-old daughter, the soldiers grabbed it from her using violence and threw it outside in the mud.
Tamimi is one of the prominent figures of the Palestinian popular struggle in the West Bank and considered by many as the engine behind Nabi Saleh's grassroots mobilization against the occupation and for the protection of the village's lands from settler take over.
Just yesterday, another leading protest organizer from Nabi Saleh, Naji Tamimi, was indicted on charges of incitement and organizing illegal demonstrations. The court extended his arrest until the end of legal proceedings. Bassem Tamimi is expected to face the same charges.
Over the past two months, the army has arrested eighteen of Nabi Saleh's residents on protests related suspicions. Half of those arrested are minors, the youngest of whom merely eleven.
The majority of recent Nabi Saleh arrested are made based on incriminations extracted from a fourteen year-old boy from the village, recently arrested at gun-point during a military night raid. The boy was then subjected to verbal and emotional pressure during his interrogation, denied his fundamental right to legal consul and interrogated in absence of his parents, albeit obliged by law. The interrogators have also never bothered informing the boy of his right to remain silent.
Ever since the beginning of the village's struggle against settler takeover of their lands, in December of 2009, the army has conducted 64 arrests related to protest in the village. As the entire village numbers just over 500 residents, the number constitutes a gross 10% of its population.
Tamimi's arrest last night corresponds to the systematic arrest of protest leaders all around the West Bank, as in the case of the villages of Bil'in and Ni'ilin.
Only recently the Military Court of Appeals has aggravated the sentence of Abdallah Abu Rahmah from the village of Bilin, sending him to 16 months imprisonment on charges of incitement and organizing illegal demonstrations. Abu Rahmah was released last week.
The arrest and trial of Abu Rahmah has been widely condemned by the international community, most notably by Britain and EU foreign minister, Catherin Ashton. Harsh criticism of the arrest has also been offered by leading human rights organizations in Israel and around the world, among them B'tselem, ACRI, as well as Human Rights Watch, which declared Abu Rahmah's trial unfair, and Amnesty International, which declared Abu Rahmah a prisoner of conscience.
The international political circumstances in which Jewish settlement in the West Bank was a ) tolerated and b) viable have passed into history.
It is indeed marvelous that the EU (and others) can observe Israeli illegalities (especially in the nature of deprivations of Palestinian human rights) and DO NOTHING (except, negatively, to grant trade advantages to Israel).
The waters of politics seem to be curiously differentially viscous, whereby trade/business/investment move with the speed of light trough political waters whereas human-rights and law-enforcement move at the speed of (cold) molasses. Might Catherine Ashton remark on this, protest it?
Hollywood should pay attention to this.
Next time they film a movie about german crimes during WWII, they should put IDF soldiers into nazi uniforms, let them loose on palestinians and record it. What a natural unadultered action movie we get.
See it’s stuff like this, that just affirms the context of the conflict. It’s not about terrorism or radical Islam or the other nonsense Zionists try to change the subject to.
It’s about LAND. It’s colonialism. It’s a colonial conflict. And naturally, the more powerful side is dominating the weaker side. It’s corrupt, it’s criminal, but it’s also old news. This has been going on for a very long time.
BDS! Non-violent resistance to Zionist terror and colonialism.
>> See it’s stuff like this, that just affirms the context of the conflict. It’s not about terrorism or radical Islam or the other nonsense Zionists try to change the subject to.
>> It’s about LAND. It’s colonialism. It’s a colonial conflict.
I do find it interesting that Zio-supremacists keep ignoring or glossing over the fact that Israel is engaged in ON-GOING aggression, oppression, theft, colonization, destruction and murder. None of those actions is defensive. All of those actions spark strife, resentment and retaliation. All of those actions could be halted unilaterally, immediately and completely. But they’re not.
No, apparently it’s more important to ponder “more elusive goals” and to deepen one’s understanding of the conflict. Surely the Palestinians don’t mind waiting – and losing their land, homes, livelihood and lives – in the interim.
Eljay! It’s in the past, man! Like, five whole minutes ago. You need to focus on the PRESENT. On all those anti-Semites slithering under every rock, just waiting to jump out and scare the pants off of Witty.
>> Eljay! It’s in the past, man! Like, five whole minutes ago. You need to focus on the PRESENT.
Yeah, what was I thinking… ;-)
Hey I heard Witty has had an epiphany akin to Saul on the way to snatch Jewish Christians in Damascus, heard he bought a copy of Israel Shahak’s book of weight from a Brit shop registered on Amazon, and is reevaluating how the Past is Prelude to the Present, and how the Present is really the Past. In his spare time, Witty’s reading why the Orthodox in Brooklyn and Israel like to wear 17th century Polish gentry costumes.
All TV stations and newspapers are full of the bombing attack in Jerusalem. They keep repeating the same scenes, CNN is drooling over any spot of blood.
However, yesterday israeli planes bombed Gaza killing eight civilians. It was hardly mentioned, it seems palestinian lives are not as valuable as israeli ones!
US Secretary of Defense Gates is in Israel. Last week he was in Bahrain and a day after saudi troops invaded that country.
Are we in again for a coordinated attack on some country? Gaza, Lebanon?
10% intra-muros and the rest, extra-muros. That makes 100% of the Palestinian people on the land are virtually prisoners. They can, occasionally and preferably, leave but they cannot return.