Jayyous
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Early last Thursday morning 17 year old Mustapha was watching TV when there was a bang on the door. Israeli soldiers came in demanding his I.D. and compared it with the names on a list they were carrying. They asked the boy, “where is your wife?” He replied, “I’m not married.” The soldiers conducted a body inspection and then took him out of the house, handcuffed and blindfolded him, put him in a jeep and drove out of the village of Azzun where he lived.

Eleven boys were arrested in Azzun that morning. Nine were released after two days, two others remained in custody in undisclosed places. On Saturday the soldiers returned to arrest three more boys as well as one whom they had just released. All the boys are underage according to international law.

This morning two members of our Jayyous EAPPI placement team have been invited by Abdulkarim Sadi, a field researcher from B ‘TSelem, to accompany him to Azzun to interview two of the boys who had been arrested and now were released and back in their homes. The interviews were held in the municipal building, hosted by the Mayor of Azzun.

Abdula is a small thin 14 year old boy whose nails are bitten down to the quick. Sitting with us he bounces his legs continually, stares at the floor and bites his lip often during the interview. He does relax some as he tells his story, looking up more frequently at his interviewer. He sometimes appears to be on the edge of tears as he talks about the way the soldiers treated him.
“The soldiers raided our house, woke me up and asked me my name. They asked me for an ID and a birth certificate. Then they took me outside to a jeep, handcuffed me, blindfolded me and took me to a military base. They asked me about my health and if I had had any operations.” He tells of being taken to another place where they accused him of throwing stones at military vehicles. They asked him to sign something, but at first he refused. Then finally he said, “OK, ok, I threw one stone but I didn’t hit anything.”

The Israeli soldier responded by hitting the boy two times in the face and calling him a liar. Another soldier kicked him in his back. They then finger printed him and took his picture. They held him “for a few hours” and then took him in a jeep back to his home village of Azzun.

Mustapha was the second boy that Abdulkarim interviewed. When the Israeli soldiers took him out of his house they traveled for about an hour. “They asked me about my health. They then transferred me to another vehicle and took me to another place. One of the soldiers there told me, ‘I’m here to help you, to finish this up as soon as possible. Were you throwing stones on July 29?’ Another soldier said, ‘If you don’t confess we will beat you.’
“I said I was not throwing stones. I would not throw them because I don’t want to go back to prison.”

He then told us that the soldiers “smacked me in the face and said bad things about God.” They started beating him, pushing him against the wall. He was still blindfolded and handcuffed. After an hour another soldier came in and said, “That first man was bad. I’m here to help you.” However, the boy refused to admit to throwing stones or to sign anything. Finally they finger printed him, took his picture and transferred him to a detention center. He was given a brown uniform. Up until this point he had been given no drink, food or bathroom opportunity.

He was then given food and they kept him overnight. They released him the next morning miles from his village without any money. It took him several hours walking and taking rides before he met one of his uncles who took him home.

Azzun is a Palestinian village of 10,000 people on the road leading west to the city of Qalqillya which is located on the Green Line established by the 1949 armistice between Israel and the Palestinian territory. Azzun has been designated area A by the Oslo accords of the 1990’s. Area A is to be administered by the Palestinian Authority, not the Israeli military.(1) However, Azzun experiences illegal Israeli military incursions, often late at night, to arrest boys and young men, to give papers ordering boys to report to Israeli authorities for questioning, and to occupy the roofs of homes and local businesses. It also blocks the entrances and exits to the village for short periods of time. Justification for these actions is “security.”
There is an illegal Israeli settlement just south east of the village. Most often the charges are throwing rocks at military vehicles that have entered the village or at settlers’ vehicles on the road that passes by Azzun. For boys up to 17, a first time conviction on the charge of rock throwing carries a fine of 1000nis ($350.) and three months in prison. A second conviction doubles the fine and gives nine months in prison.

Mustapha continues to proclaim his innocence. “I was arrested unfairly. I have not admitted to any wrong doing.” And Hasan from the mayor’s office in Azzun explains, “Some states use diplomacy, law and reason to solve problems while others, like the United States of American and the Israeli government continue to use a big stick.”

(1) United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Occupied Palestinian Territory, Special Focus, December 2009, p.2.


EAPPI-US and Global Ministries of the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) have sent me as an Ecumenical Accompanier serving the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). The views contained herein are personal to me and do not necessarily reflect those of EAPPI-US and Global Ministries or the WCC.