Press Release: CFJ-Colorado condemns the recent Israeli attack on the Palestinian town of Beit Ummar, West Bank, Occupied Palestine.

Center for Freedom and Justice – Beit Ummar, Palestine

Center for Freedom and Justice – Colorado
P.O. Box 12235
Denver, Colorado 80212
USA

CFJ Colorado – Saving Beit Ummar

Press Release: CFJ-Colorado condemns the recent August 3, 2023 Israeli attack on the Palestinian town of Beit Ummar, West Bank, Occupied Palestine.

As a part of its overall campaign to continue to build settlements in the West Bank and to treat Gaza as an open air concentration camp, on August 3, 2023, Israeli Defense Forces invaded and attacked the town of Beit Ummar (near Hebron, in the West Bank), this in an email from Bessam Adi, Executive Director of the Center for Freedom and Justice, Beit Ummar, Palestine.

As reported to us by eyewitnesses in Beit Ummar, the attack on the town targeted 14 young men, including freed prisoners, wounded and children. The town’s population was assaulted with rubber bullets and tear gas. Many were injured.

Sizeable IDF forces along with so-called border guards that included dozens of military vehicles attacked most of the neighborhoods of Beit Ummar at dawn (on August 4). The occupation soldiers stormed dozens of citizens’ homes, which soldiers raided and searched. The operation resulted in the arrest of 14 young men, including freed and wounded prisoners and children, among them: Wahib Abd al-Jawad Khalil, 14 years old, Ahmad Karim Muhammad Khalil, 17 years old, Hasan Waleed Jamal Musif Sabarneh, 18 years old, Muhammad Nizam al-Khalil, 21 years old, Abdullah Muhammad Khalil Sabarneh, 23 years old, Alaa Ghazi Mufleh Ordinary, 22 years old, Qassam Ghazi Muflih Ordinary, 17 years old, Muhammad Mahmoud Bahar, 26 years old Mahdi Muhammad Hammad Abu Mariya, 18 years old. Two other young men received foot wounds from rubber bullets; there were several cases of suffocation that also resulted. The wounded were treated in the field during the clashes that took place in the Al-Ain Triangle of the town.

Later IDF military force withdrew to Etzion Camp, north of Beit Ummar.

The Center for Freedom and Justice – Colorado – engaged in an informal sister city “people-to-people” project with the Center for Freedom and Justice in Beit Ummar. The “Center” in Beit Ummar is a registered civic association engaged in infrastructural projects in the town, among them a Women’s Market, the development of an organic farming project, the preservation and increased productivity of Palestinian farmlands neighboring the town just to name a few. We, in Colorado, now in our sixth year continue to publicize and support these projects, trying to help Palestinians insure that life for their community is both liveable and prosperous in a situation of military occupation and extreme repression by the Israeli authorities.

We at the Center for Freedom and Justice – Colorado
– condemn this Israeli assault on the Palestinian town of Beit Ummar, one of many IDF incursions into Palestinian villages, towns and cities.
– call for an end to the current Israeli campaign of repression against all Palestinian regions and for an end to the Israeli military occupation, the longest military occupation of foreign territory in the past century
– for a diplomatic process that will provide a permanent solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.

We call on the Colorado Congressional Delegation to investigate the Israeli attack on Beit Ummar
and that the Colorado members of Congress support H.R. 3103 “Defending the Human Rights of Palestinian Children and Families Living Under Israeli Military Occupation. They should join the 29 current co-sponsors of the bill.

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For CFJ-Colorado:

Gary Anderson – gary4wtr@yahoo.com
Rob Prince – robertjprince@gmail.com