Israel Must Now Open Its Nuclear Program to IAEA Inspection, or Face Sanctions

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Israel Must Now Open Its Nuclear Program to IAEA Inspection, or Face Sanctions

Iran has currently met its obligations to the IAEA under the 2015 US-­led agreement with the UN and now IT is the time for Israel to submit its nuclear program to UNSC inspection or face international sanctions. The imperative is for:

1. The Negev Nuclear Research Center at Dimona to be fully opened to inspection by the IAEA and its estimated undeclared stockpile of up to 400 nuclear warheads be put under UN supervision for eventual destruction other than those required for legitimate defence purposes, estimated not to exceed five warheads (5) in total.

2. Israel’s capacity for uranium enrichment to be severely limited for a minimum of 15 years and that all its centrifuges in excess of 5000 to be dismantled under IAEA supervision

3. That all supplies of heavy water be shipped to the US or other approved recipient, apart from the minimum required for legitimate medical isotopes

4. That inspections teams from the IAEA continuously monitor all Israeli nuclear sites and to verify all fissile materials thereupon.

5. That the state of Israel to become a party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) with immediate effect.

The timescale for all such specified actions to be approved by the United Nations Assembly in General Session.


Note

1. http://fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/farr.htm

The man behind the curtain: Israeli colonel captured among ISIL terrorist forces in Iraq

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The man behind the curtain: Israeli colonel captured among ISIL terrorist forces in Iraq

This was definitely not supposed to happen. It seems that an Israeli military man with the rank of colonel was "caught with IS pants down." By that I mean he was captured amid a gaggle of so-called IS - or Islamic State or ISIS or DAESH depending on your preference - terrorists, by soldiers of the Iraqi army. Under interrogation by the Iraqi intelligence he apparently said a lot regarding the role of Netanyahu's IDF in supporting IS.


In late October an Iranian news agency, quoting a senior Iraqi intelligence officer, reported the capture of an Israeli army colonel, named Yusi Oulen Shahak, reportedly related to the ISIS Golani Battalion operating in Iraq in the Salahuddin front. In a statement to Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency a Commander of the Iraqi Army stated, "The security and popular forces have held captive an Israeli colonel." He added that the IDF colonel "had participated in the Takfiri ISIL group's terrorist operations." He said the colonel was arrested together with a number of ISIL or IS terrorists, giving the details: "The Israeli colonel's name is Yusi Oulen Shahak and is ranked colonel in Golani Brigade... with the security and military code of Re34356578765az231434."

The news of this capture went further:

... that the relevant bodies are now interrogating the Israeli colonel to understand the reasons behind his fighting alongside the ISIL forces and the presence of other Zionist officers among ISIL terrorists.

The Iraqi security forces said the captured colonel has already made shocking confessions.

Several ISIL militants arrested in the last one year had already confessed that Israeli agents from Mossad and other Israeli espionage and intelligence bodies were present in the first wave of ISIL attacks on Iraq and capture of Mosul in Summer 2014, but no ranking Israeli agent had been arrested. 

Political and military experts told FNA that the capture of the Israeli colonel will leave a grave impact on Iraq's war strategy, including partnership with Israeli allies.

Why Israel? 

Ever since the beginning of Russia's very effective IS bombing of select targets in Syria on September 30, details of the very dirty role of not only Washington, but also NATO member Turkey under President Erdogan, Qatar and other states has come into the sunlight for the first time.

It's becoming increasingly clear that at least a faction in the Obama Administration has played a very dirty behind-the-scenes role in supporting IS in order to advance the removal of Syrian President Bashar al Assad and pave the way for what inevitably would be a Libya-style chaos and destruction which would make the present Syrian refugee crisis in Europe a mere warmup by comparison.

The "pro-IS faction" in Washington includes the so-called neo-conservatives centered around disgraced former CIA head and executioner of the Iraqi "surge" General David Petraeus. It also includes US General John R. Allen, who since September 2014 had served as President Obama's Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) and, until she resigned in February 2013, it included Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Significantly, General John Allen, an unceasing advocate of a US-led "No Fly Zone" inside Syria along the border to Turkey, something President Obama refused, was relieved of his post on 23 October, 2015. That was shortly after launch of the highly-effective Russian strikes on Syrian IS and Al Qaeda's Al Nusra Front terrorist sites changed the entire situation in the geopolitical picture of Syria and the entire Middle East.

UN Reports cites Israel 

That Netanyahu's Likud and the Israeli military work closely with Washington's neo-conservative war-hawks is well-established, as is the vehement opposition of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Obama's nuclear deal with Iran. Israel regards the Iranian-backed Shi'a Islamist militant group, Hezbollah, based in Lebanon, as arch foe. Hezbollah has been actively fighting alongside the Syrian Army against ISIS in Syria. General Allen's strategy of "bombings of ISIS" since he was placed in charge of the operation in September 2014, as Russia's Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov have repeatedly pointed out, far from destroying ISIS in Syria, had vastly expanded their territorial control of the country. Now it becomes clear that that was precisely the intent of Allen and the Washington war faction.

Since at least 2013 Israeli military have also openly bombed what they claim were Hezbollah targets inside Syria. Investigation revealed that in fact Israel was hitting Syrian military and Hezbollah targets who are valiantly fighting against ISIS and other terrorists. De facto thereby Israel was actually helping ISIS, like General John Allen's year-long "anti-ISIS" bombings.

That a faction in the Pentagon has secretly worked behind-the-scenes to train, arm and finance what today is called ISIS or IS in Syria is now a matter of open record. In August 2012, a Pentagon document classified "Secret," later declassified under pressure of the US NGO Judicial Watch, detailed precisely the emergence of what became the Islamic State or ISIS emerging from the Islamic State in Iraq, then an Al Qaeda affiliate.

The Pentagon document stated, "...there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition [to Assad-w.e.] want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)." The supporting powers to the opposition in 2012 then included Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the USA and behind-the-scenes, Netanyahu's Israel. 

Precisely this creation of a "Salafist Principality in eastern Syria," today's territory of ISIL or IS, was the agenda of Petraeus, General Allen and others in Washington to destroy Assad. It's what put the Obama Administration at loggerhead with Russia, China and Iran over the bizarre US demand Assad must first go before ISIS can be destroyed. Now the game is in the open for the world to see Washington's duplicity in backing what the Russian's accurately call "moderate terrorists" against a duly-elected Assad. That Israel is also in the midst of this rats' nest of opposition terrorist forces in Syria was confirmed in a recent UN report.

What the report did not mention was why Israeli IDF military would have such a passionate interest in Syria, especially Syria's Golan Heights.

Why Israel wants Assad Out 

In December, 2014 the Jerusalem Post in Israel reported the findings of a largely ignored, and politically explosive report detailing UN sightings of Israeli military together with ISIS terrorist combatants. The UN peacekeeping force, UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), stationed since 1974 along the Golan Heights border between Syria and Israel, revealed that Israel had been working closely with Syrian opposition terrorists, including Al Qaeda's Al Nusra Front and IS in the Golan Heights, and "kept close contact over the past 18 months." The report was submitted to the UN Security Council. Mainstream media in the US and West buried the explosive findings.

The UN documents showed that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) were maintaining regular contact with members of the so-called Islamic State since May of 2013. The IDF stated that this was only for medical care for civilians, but the deception was broken when the UNDOF observers identified direct contact between IDF forces and ISIS soldiers, including giving medical care to ISIS fighters. Observations even included the transfer of two crates from the IDF to ISIS forces, the contents of which have not been confirmed. Further the UN report identified what the Syrians label a "crossing point of forces between Israel and ISIS," a point of concern UNDOF brought before the UN Security Council. 

The UNDOF was created by a May, 1974 UN Security Council Resolution No. 350 in the wake of tensions from the October 1973 Yom Kippur War between Syria and Israel. It established a buffer zone between Israel and Syria's Golan Heights according to the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement, to be governed and policed by the Syrian authorities. No military forces other than UNDOF are permitted within it. Today it has 1,200 observers.

Since 2013 and the escalation of Israeli attacks on Syria along the Golan Heights, claiming pursuit of "Hezbollah terrorists," the UNDOF itself has been subject to massive attacks by ISIS or Al Qaeda's Al Nusra Front terrorists in the Golan Heights for the first time since 1974, of kidnappings, of killings, of theft of UN weapons and ammunition, vehicles and other assets, and the looting and destruction of facilities. Someone obviously does not want UNDOF to remain policing the Golan Heights.

Israel and Golan Heights Oil 

In his November 9 White House meeting with US President Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu asked Washington to reconsider the fact that since the 1967 Six-Days' War between Israel and the Arab countries, Israel has illegally occupied a significant part of the Golan Heights. In their meeting, Netanyahu, apparently without success, called on Obama to back formal Israeli annexation of the illegally-occupied Golan Heights, claiming that the absence of a functioning Syrian government "allows for different thinking" concerning the future status of the strategically important area. 

Of course Netanyahu did not address in any honest way how Israeli IDF and other forces had been responsible for the absence of a functioning Syrian government by their support for ISIS and Al Nusra Front of Al Qaeda.

In 2013, when UNDOF began to document increasing contact between Israeli military and IS and Al Qaeda along the Golan Heights, a little-known Newark, New Jersey oil company, Genie Energy, with an Israeli daughter company, Afek Oil & Gas, began also moving into Golan Heights with permission of the Netanyahu government to explore for oil. That same year Israeli military engineers overhauled the forty-five mile border fence with Syria, replacing it with a steel barricade that included barbed wire, touch sensors, motion detectors, infrared cameras, and ground radar, putting it on par with the Wall Israel has constructed in the West Bank.

Interestingly enough, on October 8, Yuval Bartov, chief geologist from Genie Energy's Israeli subsidiary, Afek Oil & Gas, told Israel's Channel 2 TV that his company had found a major oil reservoir on the Golan Heights: "We've found an oil stratum 350 meters thick in the southern Golan Heights. On average worldwide, strata are 20 to 30 meters thick, and this is 10 times as large as that, so we are talking about significant quantities." As I noted in an earlier article, the International Advisory Board of Genie Energy includes such notorious names as Dick Cheney, former CIA head and infamous neo-con James Woolsey, Jacob Lord Rothschild and others.

Of course no reasonable person in their right mind would suggest there might be a link between Israeli military dealings with the ISIS and other anti-Assad terrorists in Syria, especially in the Golan Heights, and the oil find of Genie Energy in the same place, and with Netanyahu's latest Golan Heights "rethink" appeal to Obama. That would smell too much like "conspiracy theory" and all reasonable people know conspiracies don't exist, only coincidences. Or? In fact, to paraphrase the immortal words of Brad Pitt in the role of West Virginia First Lieutenant Aldo Raine in the final scene of Tarantino's brilliant film, Inglorious Basterds, it seems that 'Ol Netanyahu and his pecker-suckin pals in the IDF and Mossad just got caught with their hands in a very dirty cookie jar in Syria.

Israel and Western powers have been creating, funding, directing, and fighting among terrorists for a long time. Its nothing new, but is a fact that rarely seems to make it into the Western media and to the awareness of most people. Or if it does, the implications are never explored. No surprise there. Perhaps that will now begin to change since these types of 'smoking guns' have never been better documented and more apparent.

Remember these British SAS guys - who were caught dressed as Arabs red-handedly inflicting violent chaos among the Iraqi population several years ago?

Israel Cuts Gas Supplies To The Gaza Strip In Midst Of Winter

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Israel Cuts Gas Supplies To The Gaza Strip In Midst Of Winter

Every year, the Israeli occupation cuts cooking gas supplies for Gaza residents during the most extreme cold waves, which tend to begin at the end of December.

A Palestinian brother and sister walk in front of a building which was destroyed in last summer’s Israel-Hamas war, in the Shijaiyah neighborhood of Gaza City, northern Gaza Strip, Monday, Feb. 23, 2015. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

Gaza, Occupied Territories – The suffering of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip has doubled, due to Israeli cuts on cooking gas supplies during this current wave of extreme cold.

“It is week four since the Israeli authorities severely decreased cooking gas supplies for the Gaza Strip,” said Mohamed al-Abadaleh, member of the Union of Owners of Fuel and Gas Companies.

He also said that the amount allowed into Gaza is only 15 per cent of the daily need during normal times; however, the current consumption is far more than the 300 tons, due to the cold weather of winter.

Gaza stations across the Gaza Strip are full of empty gas containers, as they are unable to fulfill the needs of the consumers.

People have started using coal and wood fire for cooking and other tasks, in order to keep life going on.

Days of Palestine notes that Israeli authorities have been stealing Palestinian gas off the Mediterranean coast, using it and selling it to the world.

In addition, it imposes restrictions on Palestinians in Gaza, with regard to obtaining gas from the huge reserves.


Every year, the Israeli occupation cuts cooking gas supplies for Gaza residents during the most extreme cold waves, which tend to begin at the end of December.

The pilot announced: “We will soon be landing in Palestine”

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The pilot announced: “We will soon be landing in Palestine”

Iberia aircraft Photo credit: Channel 2 News

Passengers on an Iberia flight from Madrid to Tel Aviv were surprised to hear the captain announce that the plane was going to land shortly in Tel-Aviv, which is in the state of Palestine. The airline’s spokesperson in response: "We apologize; the pilot will no longer be allowed to fly to Israel."

Passengers on Iberia Airline’s flight 3316 from Madrid to Tel Aviv were surprised to hear the captain’s announcement just a few minutes before landing. “We will soon be landing in Tel Aviv, which is in the state of Palestine,” the captain declared.

Lior, a passenger on Iberia flight 3316, told Channel 2 news that he was shocked by the announcement. “The entire flight immediately started whispering. We live in Israel and I don’t understand why he wouldn’t say the name of our country. He had purposely said it in English so we would understand it. It was deliberate, especially during these tense days Israel is going through.” Another passenger added: "It is not acceptable; everyone noticed it."

A spokesperson for the airline apologized for the incident and said that the airline has many flights flying back and fourth from Israel and that the company is well aware of the fact that Tel Aviv is in the State of Israel. Moreover, the spokesperson added that the company would investigate the incident and that the pilot would no longer be allowed to fly to Israel in the near future.

Israeli Soldiers Shoot 7-Year-Old Palestinian Girl In Face For No Reason At All (VIDEO)

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Israeli Soldiers Shoot 7-Year-Old Palestinian Girl In Face For No Reason At All (VIDEO)

Israeli soldiers shot a Palestinian child in the face while she played on the balcony of her family home in the West Bank, this month. The case exemplifies the growing and increasingly lawless violence meted out across the West Bank by Israeli occupation forces.

On Friday September 25, seven-year-old Maram Abed al-Latif al-Qaddumi was standing on the balcony of her family home in Kafr Qaddoum, when Israeli soldiers shot her in the face with a rubber-coated bullet. Maram is not the child of a suspected terrorist (and would not be “fair game” even if she were), she is the daughter of Nablus Police Chief  Colonel Abdul-Latif al-Qaddoumi.

Her father was home when the bullets were fired at his daughter and raced to his car with the girl in his arms, planning to take her to hospital for treatment. But as he drove from the house, Israeli forces opened fire on the vehicle. The pair were later taken to the Rafidia Governmental Hospital in Nablus with head injuries, where they remain in a stable condition.

The shooting comes amid a wave of Israeli reprisals against the town for its continued non-violent protests against the expansion of the Apartheid Wall which encircles and imprisons Palestinians, while cutting them off from their farms, workplaces and neighboring towns.

Israel has injured an average 39 Palestinian civilians every week of 2015, the vast majority of them injured at non-violent protests. Israeli soldiers have repeatedly deployed live fire on peaceful protesters. Amid growing international criticism, Israel has taken an astonishing approach to avoid future condemnation. Instead of ceasing to kill and injure unarmed civilians, they have instead opted to legalize such shootings.

“The Israel Police will be expanding their use of firearms against stone-throwers in the south of the country, as authorities struggle to contend with the rise of riots and violence,” Israeli daily Haaretz reported Monday.

“Legal and police sources say that the decisions on how to deal with stone-throwers in Jerusalem will also be applied to rioters in the south, particularly those who throw stones at vehicles,” it adds.

But as Electronic Intifada points out, what Israel describes as “riots,” is all too often a peaceful protest against the illegal occupation and land confiscation in the West Bank.

To understand how the majority of Israeli citizens react to such shootings, we can look at the reaction to another shooting recently:


Electronic Intifada reports:

The status accompanying it says: “This is the only way it will work. You throw a rock? You get a bullet. Share it, friends!”

The post has been shared more than 3,000 times and hundreds of comments express sadistic joy at the sight of soldiers shooting a Palestinian who has no rights because he lives under military rule.

A common complaint is that the youth was not shot in the head or heart and killed outright.

“I’m proud of our warriors!” declares Angela Vainer. “What fun to see such a video,” writes Maria Kogan.

“Well done!!! Next time, hit the testicles,” suggests Karin Kazav.

Israel is becoming increasingly belligerent and they have been killing Palestinians in cold blood, outside any pretext of lawfulness. Whether a local lawmaker at a peaceful protest, a teenager throwing stones at tanks, a seven-year-old playing on your family balcony, or a toddler sleeping in your bed — you could be killed by an Israeli soldier or civilian with impunity.


There is no safe place for Palestinians in what has become Greater Israel. It is their very existence that so offends the racial supremacist, theocratic state of Israel. Until this rogue state’s backers in the U.S. and the West get on the right side of history, the Palestinians will continue to suffer this cruel and arbitrary punishment for being the “wrong” race, from point of view of their occupiers.

Netanyahu Proposes Revoking Residency Of 80,000 Palestinians From Jerusalem

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Netanyahu Proposes Revoking Residency Of 80,000 Palestinians From Jerusalem

In Jerusalem, the Israeli Annexation Wall has been constructed in such a way as to annex as much of Jerusalem as possible for the Israeli state, while forcing the Palestinian population into smaller and smaller enclaves

Israeli border police check Palestinian’s identification cards at a checkpoint in Jerusalem, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2015. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

The Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, in a recent Cabinet meeting, proposed revoking the residency rights of 80,000 Jerusalemites, which would mean that the people of Sho’afat refugee camp and Kafr Aqab, as well as other neighborhoods, would be cut off from the rest of Jerusalem.

The proposal was considered by the Israeli Cabinet in their recent meeting, but no decision was made.

Already, the 3 million Palestinians living in the West Bank have been severed from Jerusalem due to the Israeli construction of a massive Wall over the past 13 years. The Wall has annexed large sections of Palestinian land and made them a de facto part of the state of Israel, in direct violation of the responsibilities of an occupier under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Israel’s government signed the Convention in 1957, requiring it to provide for the needs of civilian populations under occupation. The Convention also requires that an Occupying Power must not transfer any civilians into the land it has militarily occupied. But Israel has transferred over half a million people into settlements constructed on Palestinian land that was militarily occupied, then illegally seized, since the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights began in 1967.

In Jerusalem, the Israeli Annexation Wall has been constructed in such a way as to annex as much of Jerusalem as possible for the Israeli state, while forcing the Palestinian population into smaller and smaller enclaves. Now, under the Israeli Prime Minister’s proposal, residents of those enclaves would lose their residency rights altogether.

Israel has an identity card system for the residents of Jerusalem that is completely unique in the world. Jewish Israelis who live in Jerusalem or in paramilitary colonies in the West Bank are afforded full Israeli citizenship. But Palestinians who live on their ancestral land in Jerusalem are given a different kind of identity card, which ensures that they have far fewer rights than Jewish residents of the city.

If a Palestinian resident of Jerusalem, for example, were to travel abroad for more than a year, Israel would consider that person to be an ‘absentee property owner’, and would seize their land and home and annex it to Israel, denying the Palestinian owner the right to return to their home. The rule only applies to Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, and not to Jewish residents of the city.

According to the Israeli paper Yedioth Ahranoth, following the construction of new walls and barricades in recent weeks to further separate and segregate Palestinian residents of Jerusalem from Jewish residents, the Israeli Prime Minister told his Cabinet ministers, “We need to examine the possibility of canceling their [Palestinian Jerusalemites] residency. There needs to be a discussion about it.”

Some Israeli ministers voiced opposition to the plan, not because they were concerned about the Palestinian Jerusalemites losing their residency rights, but because they believe such a division would “give up territory” that some Israelis believe should belong to Israel.

That claim is based on a military takeover of the land by Israeli forces. Neither international law nor signed agreements recognize military takeover of land as a legitimate way of expanding state territory.

Israeli police shoot, kill 17-year-old Palestinian in Hebron

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Israeli police shoot, kill 17-year-old Palestinian in Hebron

Scene of the incident

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- Israeli border police shot and killed a 17-year-old Palestinian girl near the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron in the southern occupied West Bank on Sunday, Palestinian and Israeli sources said.

The girl was identified as Dania Irsheid, 17, from central Hebron.

An Israeli police spokesperson said that the girl was shot dead after police officers allegedly saw "a knife in her hand." No Israelis were injured during the incident.

A Palestinian woman who was in the area told Ma'an that she watched as "occupation soldiers covered a young Palestinian woman who was lying on the ground bleeding without giving her medical aid at all, before an ambulance arrived and took her."

Another witness told Ma'an that he saw a schoolgirl with a schoolbag on her back trying to cross the Israeli checkpoint near the Ibrahimi mosque.

"An Israeli soldier asked her to take the knife out of her bag, then he immediately fired gunshots into the air," the witness said. "Seconds later the schoolgirl was lying on the ground bleeding."

The woman's death brings the total number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces to at least 57 since the beginning of the month.

While 29 of those killed were shot after allegedly carrying out attacks on Israelis, a number of alleged attacks have been disputed by Palestinian witnesses and investigations by rights groups who say the suspects posed no threat at the time of their death.

Video footage in a number of cases has raised criticism of what Israeli rights group B'Tselem terms "extrajudicial executions," where a "shoot-to-kill" policy advocated by Israeli officials has led to high numbers of unnecessary deaths.

Hebron has seen a particularly high death toll in recent weeks with nine Palestinians shot dead since late September -- in every case after an alleged stabbing attempt -- and one Palestinian activist dying from excessive tear gas inhalation.

At least nine Israelis have been killed by Palestinians since Oct. 1, leading Israeli authorities to deploy large numbers of Israeli military personnel and police forces across the occupied Palestinian territory.

Israel “Violating Every International Law” with Use of Lethal Weapons against Palestinian Civilians

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Israel “Violating Every International Law” with Use of Lethal Weapons against Palestinian Civilians

The Israeli army is using very dangerous weapons, which can be lethal, to disperse demonstrators who are just demonstrating. The rules of engagement that the Israeli army is using against Palestinian demonstrators simply violate every international law.

First of all, Israeli forces use high velocity bullets, which have already caused at least 300 injuries and taken the lives of many people.

Second, they use what they call “rubber bullets,” but these are not rubber bullets at all; it’s a misconception or misrepresentation to call them “rubber.”

There are two types of rubber bullets. One is a cylinder, but inside it you have a very heavy metal. Usually when it is shot from a close distance it penetrates the body and frequently it penetrates the brain and becomes fatal.It is also very dangerous when it hits the eye. Many Palestinians have lost eyes because of these kinds of bullets.

The other type of bullet they call “rubber” is not rubber at all but a very heavy shard, and this shard is covered with a very thin piece of plastic. Again, this is very dangerous and responsible for very serious injuries and it is misleading to keep saying that it is “rubber.”

Third, recently, Israeli forces started using this kind of bullet in a big quantity, they are heavy metallic bullets which are usually used against animals, but now they are using them against Palestinians.

You have what they call 0.22 bullets. The 0.22 bullet is a very small bullet, but it’s very dangerous because when it hits a vital organ or a major vein it can cause bleeding to death.The so-called 0.22 bullet is used by snipers and it has been responsible for the death and injury of many people. Even B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organisation, issued a statement saying that their use is illegal.

Then you have the sponge, and the sponge is dangerous because it has taken away already 13 eyes, including 7 children who lost their eyes.They also use tear gas bombs, and they throw them in very big quantities, creating what we call “closed room effect”, which could kill people because of suffocation.We have already lost three women in previous years because of tear gas, they suffocated from tear gas. Sometimes Israeli forces fire up to 50 tear gas bombs at once and that can also have long term effects.

When you throw tear gas to disperse the crowd you throw one, two, three tear gas bombs, not fifty.Tear gas is also very dangerous because it is a chemical and we don’t know the long term effects of using such chemicals. Many people including myself have had serious bronchitis and laryngitis because of this. We think that long term and repeated exposure could be risky to people’s health.

Some neighbourhoods like Al-Aida camp in Bethlehem are very close to confrontation areas andare routinely exposed to tear gas, so children, families, everyone breathes in tear gas around the clock. The furniture is full of it, the walls, the beds, everything.

Then they use stun grenades, and stun grenades are dangerous especially when they are thrown directly at people. Many people have had severe injuries because they have had stun grenades thrown at them directly, and when they explode they can cause serious injuries. Some people have lot their hearing because of stun grenades.Tear gas bombs also, the metallic ones are especially dangerous because sometimes the army uses them as bullets in the sense that they direct them at someone. One of the guys who died from this, his heart stopped beating when the tear gas bomb hit him.


You should not shoot people when they are very far from you and when they present no risk to you. They start shooting when they see people in the distance.