WEST BANK: Israeli military court sentences Palestinian nonviolence activist to prison
An Israeli military court Monday sentenced Palestinian nonviolence activist Abdullah Abu Rahmeh to one year in prison and a $1,400 fine after it found him guilty of “incitement” and “organizing illegal demonstrations.”
Abu Rahmeh’s arrest had provoked strong international reaction, with some describing it as an attempt to silence freedom of expression.
The court gave the military prosecutor one month to appeal the decision and ask for a harsher sentence. The prosecutor had sought a sentence of more than two years to make an example of Abu Rahmeh.
Barring an appeal, Abu Rahmeh should be released in a couple of months because he has already served 10 months.
Abu Rahmeh is the coordinator of the Bilin Popular Resistance Committee against the Wall and Settlements, established in early 2005 to nonviolently resist Israeli annexation of Palestinian village land.
Bilin, a village northwest of Ramallah, is close to the “green line,” the 1967 de facto border between the West Bank and Israel. In the 1980s and '90s, Israel built settlements on land seized from the village and in 2004 seized more to build the separation barrier. Eventually, Bilin lost more than 60% of its farmland.
Abu Rahmeh and villagers, along with Israeli and international activists, began holding weekly protests in the village. Participants march to the area where Israeli bulldozers are working on the barrier, and as they get close, Israeli soldiers, on the other side of the barrier, shower them with tear gas.
Some of the protests have turned violent, and in some cases people have been killed. Palestinian teens throw stones at soldiers during the protests, and the Israeli military claimed that some of them said that Abu Rahmeh had told them to do so. Their testimony was used to convict Abu Rahmeh, who denied the accusation.
Before his arrest, Abu Rahmeh rejected Israeli claims that the protest organizers incited violence.
“We do not tell people to throw stones at soldiers,” he said. “Our protest is peaceful and nonviolent, and when kids throw stones, we tell them to stop, but we are not always successful.”
Several human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have condemned the arrest of Abu Rahmeh as an assault on the right of freedom of expression.
Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, who visited Bilin to see the protests firsthand, called on Israel to release Abu Rahmeh. European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said in a recent statement that the arrest of Abu Rahmeh intended “to prevent him and other Palestinians from exercising their legitimate right to protest.”
-- Maher Abukhater in Ramallah, West Bank
Photo: Abdullah Abu Rahmeh at the Israeli military court near Ramallah. Photo credit: Courtesy of the Popular Resistance Committee
Why is this news? Israel is barely 22000 sq. km, or about three times the size of New York and one of the smallest countries in the world!
Posted by: atrayu | October 12, 2010 at 08:26 AM
Thank you, LA Times, for publishing the story. I only wish the editors chose to give it more prominence on the site.
Americans have been brainwashed by 62 years of Israeli propaganda to believe that Palestinians are the violent aggressors, and Israelis are the peaceful victims. The exact opposite is true.
Editors, you need to do a better job of re-educating LA Times readers on the facts of what is really going on by placing articles like this where more people will see them on the web site.
BOYCOTT, DIVEST and SANCTION
http://www.JewishVoiceForPeace.org
Posted by: Geoff Trapp | October 12, 2010 at 08:14 AM
Zionist apologists are always asking where is the Palestinian Gandhi, as if all that has been missing for these sixty years is someone to whom they could return the land they have stolen.
Now they know. Like Abdullah Abu Rahmeh, he's in an Israeli prison, along with the 10,000 other Palestinians rotting there. There are few Palestinian families without a husband, father, brother, or relative who has been imprisoned by Israel.
Posted by: David_G. | October 11, 2010 at 09:47 PM
...and this happened in the "only democracy in the Middle East."
Yeah, right.
Editor
The Palestine Review
http://palestinereview.com
Posted by: Palestine Review | October 11, 2010 at 03:22 PM