Jaffa Women's Cooperative

I work with the Jaffa Palestinian women's embroidery co-operative in the city of Hebron in the southern West Bank. The co-op is the only women-owned business in the entire old city. It consists of 120 women in seven villages in the Hebron area, who make embroidered crafts by hand and set their own prices. Many of the women are the sole providers for their families as their husbands have been killed or arrested by the Israeli Army. I help the women sell their crafts in the United States and I also take their packages to Jerusalem so they can be shipped overseas (most Palestinians are not allowed to travel to Jerusalem and there is little or no accessible postal service in the West Bank.)



This project is very important, not only because it empowers Palestinian women, but because the old city of Hebron is under direct Israeli military control. Therefore helping these women survive economically also helps them stay to fight the occupation. Four hundred illegal Israeli settlers have taken over large chunks of the old city. Right above the shop is the Israeli settlement of Beit Haddassah. Several years ago, the Israeli military forcibly welded shut the doors to most shops in the area in an attempt to force Palestinians out of the area to leave room for settler expansion. However, over the last two years, shop-keepers, including the women's co-op, have been returning to the area and reopening their shops in defiance of the Israeli military and settlers.




Life in the old city is not easy. Israeli settlers often throw garbage down on Palestinians shopping below. Doors of Palestinian houses have been spray painted with the Stars of David in a clear attempt to intimate and displace Hebron residents. Israeli soldiers patrol the streets, often stopping to harass the women in the shop and detain young men in the area. The home next to the women's co-operative had its top room burned to a crisp three months ago when Israeli settlers threw a molotov through the window. Yet these women are staying put, and they are continuing to teach themselves and their community how to resist occupation through economic self-sufficiency




Support the women of Palestine!

To find out more about this co-operative, or to buy embroidery from the women, visit http://palestineembroidery.wordpress.com/

Military invasions in the Southern West Bank

Entrance to the village of Beit Ummar, which is periodically closed off by the army.

I've been working in the south for the past week, trying to document massive settlement expansion and military violence. Below is a report I've compiled that is being used by the Palestine Solidarity Project.


Israeli Military Invasions Intensify in Southern West Bank

In the early hours on February 24th, Israeli Forces invaded the villages of Sa’ir and Idhna, in the Hebron district of the southern West Bank, and arrested four men. More than ten jeeps entered Idhna at approximately 12:30am. Around 40 soldiers surrounded the house of Hatem Mahmoud Al-Kharuf, and ordered all the family members outside. They then proceeded to search the house, turning everything upside down and smashing a bedroom wardrobe. A shared Taxi (service) owned by Hatem’s brother that was parked outside was also ransacked, with the soldiers tearing off large pieces of the interior and inexplicably breaking open the airbags. The taxi was just recently bought, and the total cost of the damages exceeds $2,800 USD.

Soldiers then arrested Hatem Al-Kharuf, a 37-year-old retired UN schoolteacher. Hatem was handcuffed, blindfolded, and taken away in an army jeep. He is currently being held in Gush Etzion on unknown charges. Israeli Forces withdrew from Idhna at 3:00am.

Around 20 jeeps of soldiers also invaded Sa’ir village at 6:00am. The army fired live ammunition in the streets and ransacked at least three houses. Three residents of Sa’ir were arrested, including Mohammad Mahmoud Jaradet, a 28-year-old construction worker. The soldiers told Mohammad that they were looking for his brother. When they could not find him, they arbitrarily arrested Mohammad in his place.

Additionally, for the past week Israeli forces have been entering Beit Ommar in the northern Hebron District daily, firing indiscriminately in the streets for hours at a time. One young man was shot one week ago in the leg with live ammunition. He was taken to hospital in Ramallah where he remains because of serious complications.

Children in Palestine

Just thought I'd share some pictures of the amazing kids here.



May they all one day experience freedom from occupation!

"I want to kill myself"

"I want to kill myself," five-year-old Mohammad tells me. "They took my mother away from me."

Mohammad's father, with tears in his eyes, tells me that he often talks like this. Mohammad's mother, Kamle, was killed by Israeli Occupation Forces as she was driving through a checkpoint in 2003.

Mohammad was just over a year old then, and his sister Hafeef was only two. Now they have no mother, and the psychological effects of this can not be missed. Their father sits with them, one on each of his knees, as he tells me what happened the night his wife was martyred.

Kamle had been driving home from Ramallah at 3am in a shared taxi, when Israeli troops stopped their car and opened fired. Kamle was killed instantly, another fallen martyr to the occupation.


Kamle was from the town of Asira Ash-Shimailya, near the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank. More than a dozen people have been killed by Israeli Forces from Asira Ash-Shimailya during the last Intifada alone.

The collective trauma of these deaths has left its mark on Palestinian society. Kamle's children will be raised without a mother, and they will forever know that the Israeli occupation took her from them.

24 hour curfew in Jayyous village

On the morning of Wednesday, February 18th, I awoke in Ramallah to a phone call that Jayyous village was under complete curfew, with hundreds of Israeli soldiers and police invading the village and conducting house to house searches. No one could go to work or school that day.

Me and a woman from Germany jumped in a service (Palestinian shared taxis) and headed towards the village, which is located in the Qalqilya district, a little more than an hour's travel away. Three other ISMers were also headed to Jayyous from Nablus, and we hoped to all meet up inside.

The large-scale military action appeared to be an act of collective punishment for the series of demonstrations that have been staged by the village against the further confiscation and destruction of village land caused by the re-routing of the annexation wall. 277 dunums of land will be razed for the new path of the Wall, with a further 5,585 dumums to be permanently confiscated when the Wall is completed. According to Stop The Wall, the settlement of Zufim is planned to expand onto much of the confiscated land.

The construction of infrastructure for the new part of the Israeli settlement known as “North Zufim” has already begun, with the construction of an electricity network that will allow for the creation of housing units.

As we were almost to the village, we suddenly saw two earthmounds blocking the road, guarded by two IDF soldiers. The soldiers would not let any of us pass, telling us that the entire town was designated a "military closed zone" by the district command office (DCO). One of the boys in our service was on his way back from a doctor's visit, and he had a bandage over his eye. Even though both he and his father were residents of the town, they were not allowed to enter.

After about half an hour, we were able to negotiate with the soldiers to let the boy and his father inside, though he father first had to suffer the indignity of pulling up his shirt and unbuttoning his pants to prove that he was unarmed. More soldiers in two jeeps arrived. One of the jeeps contained an arrested youth who was handcuffed and blindfolded. The solders were adamant that me and the German activist could not pass.

At this point, there was not enough cover to walk around the soldiers without being seen, so we headed to the neighboring town of Azzoun. From there, we met up with two other Swedish ISMers and called for a taxi to take us the long way around the village to try our luck at the northern entrance.

It took us more than half an hour of traveling on back roads to reach a street leading to the northern entrance. The road was blocked with an earthmound but was unguarded. So we got out of the taxi and walked quickly around the blockade, up a hill through the fields, and made it into the outskirts of Jayyous.

No one was walking the streets inside the village and we could hear army jeeps using loudspeakers to order everyone to stay inside. A door opened, and a family told us to quickly come in. We went up to their roof to see what was happening, and we stashed our bags and passports with the family. After calling the three ISMers that were supposed to meet us inside, we learned that they had been caught by a border police patrol and driven out of the village.

At this time, we saw a group of seven soldiers beating on the door of a house across the street. The door opened, and the soldiers occupied the house. Fearing the house would be ransacked or its male inhabitants arrested, we went over and stood at its entrance. The soldiers were shocked to see us and wanted to know what we were doing there. We replied that we were human rights workers simply observing the situation.

Suddenly, a man in his early twenties was led outside of the house in cuffs. We quickly surrounded the soldiers, began filming them and yelled at them to stop. As I tried to snap a couple of photos, a soldiers grabbed my camera and kicked me in the shin. I grabbed my camera back, and we began to scuffle for it. He ripped my shirt, but he was not able to get it back and eventually gave up after his commander walked over.

The detained man was taken into a jeep, and returned, uncuffed, a few minutes later. He told us that the soldiers had slapped him a couple of times, and then let him go.

For a few hours, we tried to assess the situation in the center of the village and avoid being seen by soldiers. There were at least a few hundred inside, and we could see several houses that flew the Israeli flag, clearly occupied by troops. We interviewed a man with his arm in a sling who told us that his wrist had been broken after a soldier hit him with an m16. We also spoke with several families who had had their houses occupied earlier in the day. They told us how their houses had been ransacked by soldiers.

After this, we decided to head to the village school where we had heard more than 100 boys had been taken. The school was being used as a mass detention center. We made our way slowly, stopping to duck behind walls whenever army patrols would drive by. When we arrived at the school, the soldiers had just left. The main gate was broken open and blindfolds and plastic cuffs littered the schoolyard. Many windows to the classroom had been broken, and the soldiers had forced their way in by breaking open the doors. Desks lay strewn over the rooms, and broken glass was everywhere.

We learned more than 100 boys had been kept in the schoolyard and called in for interrogation one by one. Many of the boys were beaten. 15 were arrested from the school and are currently being held at Huwarra military camp. The rest were released.

After we left the school, a border police jeep zoomed up to us out of nowhere and ordered us to stop. Within minutes, more than 25 border policemen arrived on the scene and we were told that we were under arrest. Playing the doom tourist card, we asserted that we were visiting some friends for lunch in the village, and that we had left our passports at our hotel in Jerusalem. After about half an hour, the policemen, clearly not wanting to bother to arrest four internationals without identification, took each of our picture and let us go with the warning that if we were seen again we would be put in jail.

A nearby family then invited us in for dinner, and we lay low inside their house. Around 7pm, army loudspeakers announced that the curfew would be lifted for the next three hours. Immediately, hundreds of people came out of their houses and headed towards the shops to buy food and cigarettes. Around 10pm, everyone was nervous that the army would return. We stayed with a group of shabab (young men) who had not been detained earlier in the day and feared they would be targeted next. While warming ourselves around some coals, one of the ISMers became interested in the book I was reading which was Assata Shakur's autobiography. She began reading one of Assata's very relevant poems to us, and it was also translated into arabic so that all of the shabab could understand.

"I have been locked by the lawless.

Handcuffed by the haters.

Gagged by the greedy.

And, if I know any thing at all,

it's that a wall is just a wall

and nothing more at all.

It can be broken down."

The army did not come back that night, and there was no curfew the next day. But for 15 boys, the ordeal did not stop there and this very minute they are still being held and interrogated without charge at Huwarra military camp.

100 year-old man attacked by Israeli army dog

I visited Salem yesterday in the hospital. Seeing the look in the eyes of a man who has lived more than 40 years of his life under foreign occupation and then have this happen to him was really tragic.


In the early morning of February 20th at 2am, Israeli Forces invaded the town of Tamoun, located in the Tubas region of the northern occupied West Bank. Around 50 soldiers in seven jeeps surrounded two houses in the town, firing sound bombs and live ammunition before breaking into the residences. During the course of the invasion, an army attack dog mauled the face of Salem Fadel Bani Odeh, aged 100 while he lay helpless in his bed. Two men, Na’el Odeh Bani Odeh, aged 23, Muhamad Mustafa Bani Odeh, aged 25, were also arrested by Israeli Occupation Forces. The windows of a nearby parked car were all shot out by army gunfire.

Salem Fadel Bani Odeh awoke to the explosions of sound bombs and live bullets. The door to his home was smashed down by soldiers, who entered the house and ordered everyone outside. But Salem, who is partially paralyzed and bedridden, could not move. As the soldiers searched the house, an army dog leaped up onto his bed and began biting his face and chest. Though nearly ten soldiers were inside the same room, they did nothing to stop the attack, and the dog continued to knaw on Salem's face. Finally, after more than half an hour, the soldiers stopped the dog and called for an ambulance. Salem was taken to Rafidia Hospital in Nablus, where he remains in moderate condition with parts of one ear bitten off and bites on his face, chest and right shoulder.

According to Ha’aretz, the Israeli army has admitted that the incident occurred.

Starting off

So I've decided to give blogging a go. Not really sure how this is all going to work out. You're going to find less personal updates and thoughts and more about the situation here.

As most of you know, I have been living and working in occupied Palestine for the last two months now and I am currently traveling around to different cities and villages around the West Bank. I am working with the International Solidarity Movement, a Palestinian-led direct action movement that is committed to challenging the occupation. So most of my work is supporting Palestinian resistance; going to demonstrations, documenting Israeli settler and soldier violence, locating political prisoners, breaking curfews, and being on-call for military invasions. I also work with the Jaffa women's embroidery co-operative in the old city of Hebron.

I will try to post every two days or so. Please share these stories, they need to be told!

Yours in struggle,
Tom