Jenin, Occupied Palestine, News
Jen Ini | 20.06.2003 19:11 | Indymedia | World
News 24 US News Site says: 22-year-old Ahmad Abahreh, of Jenin town, blew
himself up inside the grocery store of Avner Mordechai, aged 63, in Sdeh
Trumot settlement in Northern '48 yesterday morning. The actual history
re-writing definition used was Israel *village* in 2 news sources, akin
to the UNs recent report on destroyed homes in Gaza which refers to 1,020
or so concrete multi-generation-lived-in houses missiled/bulldozed by the
IOF as 'shelters'. Jihad Islami claimed responsibility for the attack
today by phoning AP, according to other news sources, but Haaretz ran a
story today stating the attacker was 20-years-old and from Yanoon
village. People here are saying the operation was carried out by a
15-year-old from Yanoon. The truth will filter out before the day is over
no doubt.
All 75 inmates in Salem holding centre near Salem village, Jenin,
situated on the Green Line, ended their five day hunger strike in protest
at soldier brutality yesterday. Salem, also a military base, is run by
Mohabarat; military intelligence; soldiers, and is notorious for its
crammed cells (8 people to a 2x2m cell, 15 to a 3x3m) and torture.
Inmates are subjected to electric shock attacks, sleep deprivation,
beatings, abused with freezing cold water followed by boiling water,
denied medical treatment, and their wrists kept bound for long periods
of time. Although Salem is a holding centre, meant for keeping prisoners
for short periods; basically interrogation and torture; some inmates have
been known to have been jailed there for over three months. Mohammad
Sayeed Jiaradat, 22, was held in Salem for 70 days from the night he was
arrested from his home on the 22 of February of this year.
15-20 of the inmates in Salem are under 18 years old.
Inmates at Salem went on hunger strike for 12 days in April, demanding
the following: basic human rights; more oxygen; inmates are incarcerated
underground; decent food; ex-inmates described how three men would be
given one egg and three small pieces of bread between them for breakfast,
whilst internationals who have been kept in similar holding centres have
described how they were given a piece of bread and a cucumber for meals;
hot water for washing; and finally, that the centre be closed down.
The Red Cross is the only international organisation allowed into Salem
to monitor conditions. The UN, despite having a human rights and
detention centre monitoring mandate (inspectors reviewed the notorious
Woomera detention centre in Australia last year) do not inspect Israeli
prisons and detention centres. The Red Cross visit Israeli prisons and
detention centres by prior arrangement but check on individual imates at
random, picking them arbitrarily from a list. The Red Cross's impact can
be argued to be limited and toothless as any findings they record are
forbidden from being made public and negotiations must be made at a
governmental level, taking governments and authorities basically at their
word, for any improvements or reforms they declare they will make. The
Red Cross was recently given the green light to enter and review
conditions in Guantanomo Bay where Afghani, British and other
international fighters are being held. They are the only organisation
which has been authorised to do so.
Nabil Ahmad Jusef Jiaradat, shot in the head with a dumdum bullet from a
tank two weeks ago in Yamoon village, died in Rafidia Hospital, Nablus,
on the 14th of June – 5 days ago. He never opened his eyes
following the attempt on his life. He is survived by eight children and
his wife.
Mohammad Saadi is still incarecerated in Huwarra. His ambulance was
exploded by IOF dynamite following his arrest approximately two weeks
ago. People are saying that there was no wanted man in his ambulance at
all and that he was arrested for the fact that his uncle is the political
head of Jihad Islami in the West Bank (Shiekh Bassam).
Ahmad Ehrewesh, 20, arrested in the camp 13 days ago has been transferred
to Jalamy prison. The reason for his arrest remains untold.
Tanks entered Jenin town centre at 4am last night, drove around, got shot
at a few times by the remains of the trigger-frustrated Jenin shebab (guys), and
left.
Older News, dated Friday June 13
On Thursday afternoon, at approximately 2.30pm, a Hummer jeep drove into
Jenin Camp, on the Burqin road, home to the UN school, the Selma Family's
sweet shop, the Abu Nassi House (awaiting demolition following their son
Abdel Karim's suicide killing mission - 4 or so were killed -
back-to-back fire-and-cover tactics with Mustafa Abu Seree in Afula last
year)and the Nidall Bedooi Naghnineh' house - partially destroyed last
November when the IOF arrested Abu Nidall Naghnineh's Wanted sons, Aqsa
fighters Nidal (28) and Abdullah al-Wahsh (20). During their incursion
into the camp, the IOF also killed Mohammad Bilalweh (12), British UN
worker Ian Hook (50)and deliberately shot Jaber Hassan (12), in the
chest; Zakariyya Sirhan (13), shrapnel in the back; Amjad Omar (12), shot
in the left foot and Irish activist and camp resident Caiohme Butterly in
the leg, plus demolished the Naghnineh family house, all three floors of
it, by gnawing into it with a bulldozer, all in the same day. The Hummer
drove up to a car full of shebab, the soldiers intending to arrest those
inside, but were to late to catch any of them as they fled their vehicle
and disappeared up into the camp warren alleyways. Jenin is full of cars
of work-less, fed-up, crew-riding shebab, crusing round the camp and
caged town streets (Jenin is ringed by approx. 6 checkpoints, theres only
so far anybody can go)the fighters with their M16s and handguns tucked
into their back belts, image contradicted by the fluffy white toy cats
and swinging love-charms adorning their car interiors. The Hummer then
ploughed into a children's school bus, at the first part of camp,
injuring one boy in his head from the impact. The Hummer then headed for
the The Al Qds Open University and stopped some young men in a car,
checked their IDs and then drove off again. Its unthinkable that they can
slide in so easily now, when in the first intifada, all the way up until
the April massacre, they had never ever broken the camp, not ever set one
green-uniformed boot into the camp.
In the evening, 10pm, a large white mercedes drove up Jenin's winding,
tank-ground streets into the town's Eastern Area (Hara Sharkeeya) and
slowed down outside the home of the Jiaradat family. Faadi Tayseer
Jiaradat, 25, a non-politically aligned vegetables trader, and Saleh
Jiaradat, 30, a senior member of Saraya Al Qds, the military wing of
Jihad Islami, were sat outside on wooden stools infront of a worn-out
stuffing-seeping sofa, drinking glasses of grainy arabic coffee,
chatting. Special forces soldiers exited the mercedes, dressed in
civillian clothes, and opened fire on them, injuring them in the arms,
throat, chest and legs. They ignored the horrified screams of the
Jiaradat sisters who ran outside at the first shot and witnessed their
brothers being pumped full of lead. Soldiers then snatched their bodies
into their vehicle, backed up by the entry of approximately 6 military
jeeps. The bodies of Saleh and Faadi were then returned to medics from
the Red Crescent society who were told they could pick them up from the
Jalamy military base checkpoint. Both brothers had been shot again
between their first asassination and subsequent mortification into
corpses.
Throngs of grief-numbed discoordinated people milled around in the
street, everybodys gaze attracted to the pool of smeared blood on the
ground. Inside the house, the dawning trauma of their brothers deaths had
left the Jiaradat sisters (all nine of them) beside themselves, their
despair exhaled in sobs and screams and stunned silence. Faadi's fiancee
was on the floor thrashing her arms and legs around, sobbing and retching, her head
supported by a sister, holding her stiffening, then flailing, body in her
arms. Another sister's dress-robe, grey/blue, was blood-soaked at the
bottom, random stains blooming upward; she was trying to explain to
someone that khalass, enough, he was gone, he was just gone and that was
that. Outside, their father or uncle, tried to placate an inconsolable
brother, telling him, 'Enough, didnt he kill soldiers? He killed many
soldiers, now he's been killed, so its ok? Hamdullilah (Thanks be to
god).
Prior to this assassination, a settler was reported to have been gunned
down by fighters from the Al Aqsa martyrs brigade, near the village of
Aarabi.
The following day, at approx. 11am, Illyad Abu Zeini, 23, from Jenin
town, was shot in the legs twice with an M16 at the main
cross-roads/square of Jenin town (aplogies for past inaccuracy, I was told 10 times with a handgun). People said he was a collaborator,
regularly calling the Israeli Mohabarat (Secret police) to inform them of
where wanted people were settling or staying. Upon his arrival at Jenin's
national hospital, he was then shot twice again in the legs, this time, people tell me, with a hand gun, possibly a Magnum 44. He was
eventually taken to Afula, inside '48 Palestine aka Israel, and is
expected to remain there for his own safety. At 1pm, a large Jihad Islami
flag flanked funeral procession left from outside the mosque in Jenin
Camp (located beside an old British colony built railway station (now a
garage and falafal shop)and marched through town, the shooahadda
(Martyrs) carried on stretchers, adorned in satin Jihad flags, chants and
vows of no surrender and neverending resistance rasped out through a
loudspeaker on a kid-heavy truck, the procession stopping for phoned-in
comments and commiserations from Sheihk Bassam, the Political Head of
Jihad in the West Bank, and word-slurred expressions of love and rage
from the Jiaradat father.
Today, at around 10pm, fighters from the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade
succeeded in killing an IOF soldier, mortally wounding him in the neck.
The fighters opened fire on a jeep in the Suetat area, north of Jenin town, on the road that leads into a cypress pine forest valley.
Jen Ini