1 oct 2012
Palestinians in Israel on Monday commemorated the killing of 13 civilians by Israeli forces in 2000, calling for justice for the victims, Israeli media reported.
Services were held in Umm el-Fahm, Nazareth, Kfar Kana and other Palestinian villages in the Galilee.
"Twelve years have passed and as far as we are concerned it is as if the incident happened yesterday," a spokesman for the families of the victims Ibrahim Siam said, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported.
"This is a wound that will not heal quickly, especially as the bottom line is that 13 young men were killed by Israeli police fire and no one has been found guilty," Said added.
Demonstrators chanted slogans and demanded that those responsible for the killings be indicted.
The Orr Commission, established following the deaths, found Israeli police incompetence and a history of discrimination against Palestinians in Israel.
Rights group Adalah represented the families of the victims before an official commission of inquiry, but in 2008 the attorney general issued a decision not to indict any of the Israeli police officers responsible for the deaths.
The killings took place in October 2000 during a series of Palestinian protests in northern Israel at the onset of the second intifada.
Around twenty percent, or 1.3 million people, of Israel's population are Palestinian.
They are largely the descendants of Palestinians that managed to remain during the 1948 war, when an estimated 700,000 were expelled from or fled their homes during fighting that would see the establishment of the state of Israel.
Rights groups say that Palestinians living in Israel face discrimination in employment, education and public funding within Israel.
The Israeli government estimates that just over 50 percent of Palestinian families in Israel live under the poverty line.
1948-Palestinians commemorate 12th anniversary of the Aqsa protests
The Palestinians in the 1948- occupied Palestine commemorated on Monday, the twelfth anniversary of the Aqsa protests, which were launched in October 1st, 2000.
Collective visits were organized from lots of villages to the tombs of the martyrs who were killed during the protests.
Palestinians from 1948- occupied territories had launched in 2000 demonstrations to protest the desecration and storming al-Aqsa Mosque by the former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
The Israeli police forces used violence and weapons to disperse the demonstrations which led to the killing thirteen Palestinian youths and injuring dozens of others.
The Higher Follow-up Committee for Arabs in 1948- occupied territories called for organizing events and activities on the anniversary of the protests, through local marches, putting wreaths on the martyrs' memorials and visiting the families of victims.
Services were held in Umm el-Fahm, Nazareth, Kfar Kana and other Palestinian villages in the Galilee.
"Twelve years have passed and as far as we are concerned it is as if the incident happened yesterday," a spokesman for the families of the victims Ibrahim Siam said, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported.
"This is a wound that will not heal quickly, especially as the bottom line is that 13 young men were killed by Israeli police fire and no one has been found guilty," Said added.
Demonstrators chanted slogans and demanded that those responsible for the killings be indicted.
The Orr Commission, established following the deaths, found Israeli police incompetence and a history of discrimination against Palestinians in Israel.
Rights group Adalah represented the families of the victims before an official commission of inquiry, but in 2008 the attorney general issued a decision not to indict any of the Israeli police officers responsible for the deaths.
The killings took place in October 2000 during a series of Palestinian protests in northern Israel at the onset of the second intifada.
Around twenty percent, or 1.3 million people, of Israel's population are Palestinian.
They are largely the descendants of Palestinians that managed to remain during the 1948 war, when an estimated 700,000 were expelled from or fled their homes during fighting that would see the establishment of the state of Israel.
Rights groups say that Palestinians living in Israel face discrimination in employment, education and public funding within Israel.
The Israeli government estimates that just over 50 percent of Palestinian families in Israel live under the poverty line.
1948-Palestinians commemorate 12th anniversary of the Aqsa protests
The Palestinians in the 1948- occupied Palestine commemorated on Monday, the twelfth anniversary of the Aqsa protests, which were launched in October 1st, 2000.
Collective visits were organized from lots of villages to the tombs of the martyrs who were killed during the protests.
Palestinians from 1948- occupied territories had launched in 2000 demonstrations to protest the desecration and storming al-Aqsa Mosque by the former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
The Israeli police forces used violence and weapons to disperse the demonstrations which led to the killing thirteen Palestinian youths and injuring dozens of others.
The Higher Follow-up Committee for Arabs in 1948- occupied territories called for organizing events and activities on the anniversary of the protests, through local marches, putting wreaths on the martyrs' memorials and visiting the families of victims.
13 oct 2011
Palestinians in Israel protest the Israeli Attorney General’s decision to not seek indictments of police officers involved in the October 2000 killings, January 2008. (Oren Ziv/ActiveStills)
It has been ten years since 13 Palestinian citizens of Israel were killed by the Israeli police force during nonviolent demonstrations at the outset of the second Palestinian intifada.
And while the victims’ families haven’t stopped demanding accountability and justice for their loved ones, a frightening realization is taking shape: in today’s Israel, what happened in October 2000 could easily happen again, if not worse.
“After this, everything is possible. The worst happened and after that it can only be worse,” said Mohammad Zeidan, the General Director of The Arab Association for Human Rights (HRA), based in Nazareth.
“There are a million reasons for an explosion concerning the racism and discrimination against the Palestinian minority [in Israel]. It just needs a small spark. And if that happens, we feel that the general political environment is worse than it used to be in 2000. It will be much worse than in 2000,” Zeidan said.
Unarmed demonstrators killed
At the end of September 2000, months before he was elected Israel’s prime minister, Ariel Sharon made his infamous visit to occupied East Jerusalem’s Haram al-Sharif, accompanied on all sides by Israeli security forces.
This inflammatory move sparked the already-growing unrest in the occupied West Bank, where Palestinians took to the streets in what became the start of the second Palestinian intifada.
Days later, on 1 October 2000, the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens in Israel announced a general strike and mass demonstrations were organized in many Arab towns inside Israel to show support for the Palestinians in the occupied territories. These protests were met with extreme violence on the part of the Israeli police force.
Rubber-coated steel bullets, live ammunition and tear gas were used unsparingly on the demonstrators, while Israeli snipers were also set up in various cities.
Three young men— Mohammed Ahmed Jabareen (23), Ahmed Ibrahim Siyyam Jabareen (18) and Rami Khatem Ghara (21) — were killed on that first day of demonstrations.
As a result of these killings, the High Follow-Up Committee extended the strike, and demonstrations continued. These too were met with violent police repression, and over the course of eight days, a total of 13 Palestinian citizens of Israel, between the ages of 17 and 42, had been killed. A Palestinian resident of the occupied Gaza Strip was also killed.
“The general feeling was that all the red lines were broken [in October 2000] and that the deterioration was very fast. The very scary part of this was that at the official level of the Jewish majority there wasn’t any kind of reaction to stop the deterioration and the killings that were happening in the streets,” Zeidan said.
No accountability
Thousands of Palestinians were injured and hundreds were subsequently detained or arrested in relation to the events that took place in October 2000.
A month later, in November 2000, the Israeli government set up a fact-finding team, the Or Commission, to look into what happened. Its findings were released in September 2003;
the Or Commission found that the Israeli police illegally used rubber-coated bullets, live ammunition and snipers to disperse demonstrators, refuted the police’s claim that it had acted in self-defense and recommended that criminal investigations be opened for each of the deaths.
Two years later, in September 2005, the Ministry of Justice’s Police Investigations Department, known as Mahash, released its own report, stating that it wouldn’t indict any Israeli police officer in relation to the violence.
This decision was met with gross indignation on the part of Palestinian citizens of Israel and faced large-scale public criticism.
As a result, then-Israeli Attorney General Menachem Mazuz launched his own investigation into Mahash’s decision, and in January 2008, Mazuz endorsed Mahash’s position that there was no reason to convict members of the Israeli police, who he argued had acted in self-defense against the demonstrators.
“[The Attorney General] closed the file on the argument that the Arab demonstrators almost used arms and they closed streets, and that in this situation, the police felt that they were in danger. In fact, he blamed the victims,” said Hassan Jabareen, the Founder and Director General of Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, and the lead lawyer for the October 2000 victims’ families.
“But if we want to analyze [Mazuz's] rhetoric, we find that he treated the demonstrators not as civilians, but as combatants. It doesn’t matter whether you are a Palestinian civilian or Palestinian combatant, whether you are citizen or resident or non-resident, your ethnicity is the matter. The Attorney General treats them [Palestinians] as enemies,” Jabareen said.
“It shows that the impunity here is very, very strong for the police.”
A deteriorating situation
In an April 2001 report looking into the behavior of Israeli police officers during the violence, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) described Israel’s law enforcement systems as being “tainted by institutionalized racism.”
“During the events of September-October 2000, this was reflected in ugly and widespread manifestations of violence and humiliation. Yet this racism is also reflected in less overt ways in legislation, regulations and procedures that effectively discriminate against these citizens,” the report, titled “Racism, Violence and Humiliation,” stated.
The report added, “Official spokespeople for the State of Israel often describe the country as ‘the only democracy in the Middle East,’ and as a member of the family of progressive and enlightened nations. The behavior of agents of the state — security force personnel and other authorities — towards its Palestinian citizens threatens to render such declarations hollow and meaningless.”
Indeed, according to Hassan Jabareen, the situation for Palestinian citizens of Israel is getting worse by the day.
“They are facing, more than in any other situation, direct racist policy and this racist policy justifies using violence against them. It seems that the situation is going towards escalation,” Jabareen said.
Mohammad Zeidan agreed, explaining that recent proposals and laws passed by the Israeli Knesset signal increasing hostility towards the country’s Palestinian minority, which makes up nearly twenty percent of the Israeli population.
“We see that the whole notion of a Jewish state is being legalized in different laws and proposals, and that creates an environment that delegitimizes our existence as citizens. This environment is the right environment for such attacks and such violence again the Palestinian minority,” Zeidan said.
He added, “Without international actual action towards the situation, nothing will be moving in Israel. I think the situation will be deteriorating more and more and that it will be much harder to speak about solutions in the future.”
Currently, Adalah is appealing to Israel’s new Attorney General, Yehuda Weinstein, to re-open investigations into the October 2000 killings.
More specifically, Adalah is asking Weinstein to look into the evidence collected against police officers involved in the killings, as well as to examine the work and procedures used by the Mahash and former Attorney General Menachem Mazuz during their separate investigations into what happened ten years ago.
“The families will continue to struggle,” said Hassan Jabareen. “Our demand today from the new Attorney General is to open the file and renew the criminal investigation. This is our demand right now.”
Originally from Montreal, Jillian Kestler-D’Amours is a freelance writer and documentary filmmaker based in occupied East Jerusalem. More of her work can be found at http://jilldamours.wordpress.com.
It has been ten years since 13 Palestinian citizens of Israel were killed by the Israeli police force during nonviolent demonstrations at the outset of the second Palestinian intifada.
And while the victims’ families haven’t stopped demanding accountability and justice for their loved ones, a frightening realization is taking shape: in today’s Israel, what happened in October 2000 could easily happen again, if not worse.
“After this, everything is possible. The worst happened and after that it can only be worse,” said Mohammad Zeidan, the General Director of The Arab Association for Human Rights (HRA), based in Nazareth.
“There are a million reasons for an explosion concerning the racism and discrimination against the Palestinian minority [in Israel]. It just needs a small spark. And if that happens, we feel that the general political environment is worse than it used to be in 2000. It will be much worse than in 2000,” Zeidan said.
Unarmed demonstrators killed
At the end of September 2000, months before he was elected Israel’s prime minister, Ariel Sharon made his infamous visit to occupied East Jerusalem’s Haram al-Sharif, accompanied on all sides by Israeli security forces.
This inflammatory move sparked the already-growing unrest in the occupied West Bank, where Palestinians took to the streets in what became the start of the second Palestinian intifada.
Days later, on 1 October 2000, the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens in Israel announced a general strike and mass demonstrations were organized in many Arab towns inside Israel to show support for the Palestinians in the occupied territories. These protests were met with extreme violence on the part of the Israeli police force.
Rubber-coated steel bullets, live ammunition and tear gas were used unsparingly on the demonstrators, while Israeli snipers were also set up in various cities.
Three young men— Mohammed Ahmed Jabareen (23), Ahmed Ibrahim Siyyam Jabareen (18) and Rami Khatem Ghara (21) — were killed on that first day of demonstrations.
As a result of these killings, the High Follow-Up Committee extended the strike, and demonstrations continued. These too were met with violent police repression, and over the course of eight days, a total of 13 Palestinian citizens of Israel, between the ages of 17 and 42, had been killed. A Palestinian resident of the occupied Gaza Strip was also killed.
“The general feeling was that all the red lines were broken [in October 2000] and that the deterioration was very fast. The very scary part of this was that at the official level of the Jewish majority there wasn’t any kind of reaction to stop the deterioration and the killings that were happening in the streets,” Zeidan said.
No accountability
Thousands of Palestinians were injured and hundreds were subsequently detained or arrested in relation to the events that took place in October 2000.
A month later, in November 2000, the Israeli government set up a fact-finding team, the Or Commission, to look into what happened. Its findings were released in September 2003;
the Or Commission found that the Israeli police illegally used rubber-coated bullets, live ammunition and snipers to disperse demonstrators, refuted the police’s claim that it had acted in self-defense and recommended that criminal investigations be opened for each of the deaths.
Two years later, in September 2005, the Ministry of Justice’s Police Investigations Department, known as Mahash, released its own report, stating that it wouldn’t indict any Israeli police officer in relation to the violence.
This decision was met with gross indignation on the part of Palestinian citizens of Israel and faced large-scale public criticism.
As a result, then-Israeli Attorney General Menachem Mazuz launched his own investigation into Mahash’s decision, and in January 2008, Mazuz endorsed Mahash’s position that there was no reason to convict members of the Israeli police, who he argued had acted in self-defense against the demonstrators.
“[The Attorney General] closed the file on the argument that the Arab demonstrators almost used arms and they closed streets, and that in this situation, the police felt that they were in danger. In fact, he blamed the victims,” said Hassan Jabareen, the Founder and Director General of Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, and the lead lawyer for the October 2000 victims’ families.
“But if we want to analyze [Mazuz's] rhetoric, we find that he treated the demonstrators not as civilians, but as combatants. It doesn’t matter whether you are a Palestinian civilian or Palestinian combatant, whether you are citizen or resident or non-resident, your ethnicity is the matter. The Attorney General treats them [Palestinians] as enemies,” Jabareen said.
“It shows that the impunity here is very, very strong for the police.”
A deteriorating situation
In an April 2001 report looking into the behavior of Israeli police officers during the violence, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) described Israel’s law enforcement systems as being “tainted by institutionalized racism.”
“During the events of September-October 2000, this was reflected in ugly and widespread manifestations of violence and humiliation. Yet this racism is also reflected in less overt ways in legislation, regulations and procedures that effectively discriminate against these citizens,” the report, titled “Racism, Violence and Humiliation,” stated.
The report added, “Official spokespeople for the State of Israel often describe the country as ‘the only democracy in the Middle East,’ and as a member of the family of progressive and enlightened nations. The behavior of agents of the state — security force personnel and other authorities — towards its Palestinian citizens threatens to render such declarations hollow and meaningless.”
Indeed, according to Hassan Jabareen, the situation for Palestinian citizens of Israel is getting worse by the day.
“They are facing, more than in any other situation, direct racist policy and this racist policy justifies using violence against them. It seems that the situation is going towards escalation,” Jabareen said.
Mohammad Zeidan agreed, explaining that recent proposals and laws passed by the Israeli Knesset signal increasing hostility towards the country’s Palestinian minority, which makes up nearly twenty percent of the Israeli population.
“We see that the whole notion of a Jewish state is being legalized in different laws and proposals, and that creates an environment that delegitimizes our existence as citizens. This environment is the right environment for such attacks and such violence again the Palestinian minority,” Zeidan said.
He added, “Without international actual action towards the situation, nothing will be moving in Israel. I think the situation will be deteriorating more and more and that it will be much harder to speak about solutions in the future.”
Currently, Adalah is appealing to Israel’s new Attorney General, Yehuda Weinstein, to re-open investigations into the October 2000 killings.
More specifically, Adalah is asking Weinstein to look into the evidence collected against police officers involved in the killings, as well as to examine the work and procedures used by the Mahash and former Attorney General Menachem Mazuz during their separate investigations into what happened ten years ago.
“The families will continue to struggle,” said Hassan Jabareen. “Our demand today from the new Attorney General is to open the file and renew the criminal investigation. This is our demand right now.”
Originally from Montreal, Jillian Kestler-D’Amours is a freelance writer and documentary filmmaker based in occupied East Jerusalem. More of her work can be found at http://jilldamours.wordpress.com.
6 oct 2010
'And then the night came down'
Families of Palestinian-Israelis killed at the start of the second intifada are still fighting for justice a decade on.
It has been 10 years since the October 2000 events that saw 13 unarmed Palestinians killed by Israeli police. Last Friday, more than 6,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel gathered in the Galilee village of Kfar Kana. Waving Palestinian flags and gripping pictures of their dead sons they marched through the town to commemorate the bloodshed.
The protestors also called for justice.
In 2003, an inquiry lead by Israeli High Court Justice Theodore Or, known as the Or Commission, criticised the actions of the police. But an internal police investigation - which critics say was superficial, at best - yielded no charges. And a decade later, there have been no prosecutions.
Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel is a local NGO that continues to represent the bereaved families and is pushing for the investigation to be reopened. Reflecting on the October 2000 events, Hassan Jabareen, Adalah's founder and director, says: "The state treated us like we are an enemy in battle."
Before October 2000, Palestinian citizens of Israel associated such killings primarily with the Occupied Territories. But the deaths and the lack of a serious investigation made Palestinians inside the Green Line feel as vulnerable as those in Gaza and the West Bank.
The events, Jabareen explains, "gave us the impression that, for the state, it's moving from a territorial conflict to an ethnic conflict".
Feelings of frustration and alienation were apparent at Friday's march. Amongst the demonstrators was Siwar Aslih. Her brother, Aseel, was 17 when he was killed by Israeli police in October 2000. He was lying face down on the ground when he was shot at close range, in the back of the neck, with live ammunition.
Siwar was just 14 when it happened. She came of age in the aftermath of her brother's death, during the second intifada. Now working towards a master's degree in group therapy and counseling, she sat down with Al Jazeera for an exclusive interview.
Al Jazeera: What do you remember about the demonstrations in 2000?
Siwar Aslih: What was shocking for everyone and made them get angry and go out and protest was Sharon's entrance to al-Aqsa [Mosque in Jerusalem] and the killing of Muhammad al-Durrah, the young child [in the Gaza Strip]. It started in Jerusalem and the [Occupied Palestinian Territories] then [Palestinians] inside the Green Line started protesting, too.
What I remember from October 2, when Aseel died ... my parents wanted to go out for a walk in [our] village [Arraba] and they asked me whether I would like to come with them. I looked outside and I saw how the street looked - it was a mess, the stones thrown on the street. It was frightening for me to see it like this and I told my parents I don't want to go with them.
After my parents left, I was with Aseel at home. I woke him up that day because his classmates from high school came to visit and I sat in [his] room.
Three Palestinian citizens of Israel were killed on October 1, the day before your brother died. How did you feel about those deaths?
People started getting killed on September 29, 2000, but not here, not in Israel. It was upsetting to hear about the Palestinians who were killed in the demonstrations in [the Occupied Palestinian Territories], but we were used to hearing news about people getting killed in [the Occupied Palestinian Territories]. We're not used to the fact that people here get killed. It was frightening ... I felt like there is a war [within Israel].
But if I think about right now ... there is a Nakba; there is Land Day; there are many other events. This is not the first time Israel shoots the Palestinian people. Where there is an occupation, there are no rules and [the Israelis] can break the rules whenever they want to. We have to be ready and we have to expect anything. I think anybody can get killed at any time.
When your brother left to go to the protest, were you worried about him?
I did not know he was going to the protest .... I knew that he was active, but the protest thing was not the kind of thing he did. He was such a peaceful, quiet guy. He was happy. He was non-violent. Aseel did activities like participating in dialogues [between Jews and Palestinians] and going to the Seeds of Peace camp.
And then people [from the village] started coming during the day to our home. The first people who came asked me about Aseel. They told me he went to the protest and they heard that he was injured ... and for me it was strange ... Aseel never went to protests.
The house was full of strangers and then the night came down and I didn't know what was happening ... I [overheard] that he died from my neighbour and her daughter.
I think I refused to believe that he died. It's not a thing I could imagine because Aseel was such an innocent and peaceful guy .... What I thought was: 'Who the hell would want to shoot Aseel?' [He] would never get into such a situation .... This was impossible.
I think it was nine or 10 o'clock ... some women started crying and people were shouting. And I remember this guy was standing right here - [points to the corner of the living room] - and he said out loud, "Aseel is a martyr".
[Sighs].
For me - it's the end. It really happened. Aseel really died.
And I remember I started crying. It's like they say that when someone is about to die, they see a script of his life. I think that's what I saw, a script with scenes from our life together. And the last image I saw of Aseel, when I heard the news, was of him smiling and of him wearing his favourite t-shirt. The green one.
The Seeds of Peace t-shirt?
Yeah.
I remember his voice message back then. It was so funny. I think I have it on my computer. It starts like, "'Allo, 'allo, 'allo". And you think that Aseel is really answering. And he's like, "I don't hear you, raise your voice."
I listened to it after he died and it was so hard for me to hear his voice, to hear him alive.
Many Palestinians refer to the October 2000 events as a turning point. Was it like that for you? Did your brother's death change your feelings about Israel and the Jewish community?
I have a problem with Zionism. I don't have a problem with Jews.
And did you feel differently before Aseel died?
We have been raised to love our homeland and be patriots for all our lives. Palestine - this is not new. My dad was a political prisoner for five years in the 1970s and he and my mum were active all their lives.
So this was not a moment that changed things for you?
No, no. But for me, it was like they broke all the boundaries. They took everything, even hope.
I don't believe there is a chance for peace here. It's not that I don't want it - I want it - but I don't believe that it' s possible, not in the current situation ... because of the government and the people [who] support the government and that's the problem.
Ten years have passed and no one has been prosecuted.
This is the legal system of Israel, okay? If Israel committed these crimes, she won't accuse, because she sent those soldiers to kill. This is an apartheid regime for me.
Are you angry?
I'm full of anger and I'm not ashamed of that. I have every right to be angry. I have been angry all my life. As a Palestinian, I have to be. I have to be angry about what happened in 1948, and I have to be angry about what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank and the refugee camps. I am also angry at the international [community] - how come you are all civilized and you talk about human rights and no one cares what is happening here?
But I also have anger towards my own people because I expect more of them, I want more.
What do you want?
I want them to care more. I don't want them to be afraid to go to protests and to bring their child with them. I don't want them to be afraid to face Israel. I think this is a battle we need to go through. You need to fight for your rights and you need to fight for your freedom. No one is going to do that for you. And I know it might cost us a lot, but it cost my brother's life. And there - this is what it takes. We need to lose something.
And I don't want to remember Aseel and the other martyrs only once a year .... We need to bring everything into awareness, into the kids' awareness, and into the schools and the homes. This has to stay in our minds all the time.
It has been 10 years since the October 2000 events that saw 13 unarmed Palestinians killed by Israeli police. Last Friday, more than 6,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel gathered in the Galilee village of Kfar Kana. Waving Palestinian flags and gripping pictures of their dead sons they marched through the town to commemorate the bloodshed.
The protestors also called for justice.
In 2003, an inquiry lead by Israeli High Court Justice Theodore Or, known as the Or Commission, criticised the actions of the police. But an internal police investigation - which critics say was superficial, at best - yielded no charges. And a decade later, there have been no prosecutions.
Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel is a local NGO that continues to represent the bereaved families and is pushing for the investigation to be reopened. Reflecting on the October 2000 events, Hassan Jabareen, Adalah's founder and director, says: "The state treated us like we are an enemy in battle."
Before October 2000, Palestinian citizens of Israel associated such killings primarily with the Occupied Territories. But the deaths and the lack of a serious investigation made Palestinians inside the Green Line feel as vulnerable as those in Gaza and the West Bank.
The events, Jabareen explains, "gave us the impression that, for the state, it's moving from a territorial conflict to an ethnic conflict".
Feelings of frustration and alienation were apparent at Friday's march. Amongst the demonstrators was Siwar Aslih. Her brother, Aseel, was 17 when he was killed by Israeli police in October 2000. He was lying face down on the ground when he was shot at close range, in the back of the neck, with live ammunition.
Siwar was just 14 when it happened. She came of age in the aftermath of her brother's death, during the second intifada. Now working towards a master's degree in group therapy and counseling, she sat down with Al Jazeera for an exclusive interview.
Al Jazeera: What do you remember about the demonstrations in 2000?
Siwar Aslih: What was shocking for everyone and made them get angry and go out and protest was Sharon's entrance to al-Aqsa [Mosque in Jerusalem] and the killing of Muhammad al-Durrah, the young child [in the Gaza Strip]. It started in Jerusalem and the [Occupied Palestinian Territories] then [Palestinians] inside the Green Line started protesting, too.
What I remember from October 2, when Aseel died ... my parents wanted to go out for a walk in [our] village [Arraba] and they asked me whether I would like to come with them. I looked outside and I saw how the street looked - it was a mess, the stones thrown on the street. It was frightening for me to see it like this and I told my parents I don't want to go with them.
After my parents left, I was with Aseel at home. I woke him up that day because his classmates from high school came to visit and I sat in [his] room.
Three Palestinian citizens of Israel were killed on October 1, the day before your brother died. How did you feel about those deaths?
People started getting killed on September 29, 2000, but not here, not in Israel. It was upsetting to hear about the Palestinians who were killed in the demonstrations in [the Occupied Palestinian Territories], but we were used to hearing news about people getting killed in [the Occupied Palestinian Territories]. We're not used to the fact that people here get killed. It was frightening ... I felt like there is a war [within Israel].
But if I think about right now ... there is a Nakba; there is Land Day; there are many other events. This is not the first time Israel shoots the Palestinian people. Where there is an occupation, there are no rules and [the Israelis] can break the rules whenever they want to. We have to be ready and we have to expect anything. I think anybody can get killed at any time.
When your brother left to go to the protest, were you worried about him?
I did not know he was going to the protest .... I knew that he was active, but the protest thing was not the kind of thing he did. He was such a peaceful, quiet guy. He was happy. He was non-violent. Aseel did activities like participating in dialogues [between Jews and Palestinians] and going to the Seeds of Peace camp.
And then people [from the village] started coming during the day to our home. The first people who came asked me about Aseel. They told me he went to the protest and they heard that he was injured ... and for me it was strange ... Aseel never went to protests.
The house was full of strangers and then the night came down and I didn't know what was happening ... I [overheard] that he died from my neighbour and her daughter.
I think I refused to believe that he died. It's not a thing I could imagine because Aseel was such an innocent and peaceful guy .... What I thought was: 'Who the hell would want to shoot Aseel?' [He] would never get into such a situation .... This was impossible.
I think it was nine or 10 o'clock ... some women started crying and people were shouting. And I remember this guy was standing right here - [points to the corner of the living room] - and he said out loud, "Aseel is a martyr".
[Sighs].
For me - it's the end. It really happened. Aseel really died.
And I remember I started crying. It's like they say that when someone is about to die, they see a script of his life. I think that's what I saw, a script with scenes from our life together. And the last image I saw of Aseel, when I heard the news, was of him smiling and of him wearing his favourite t-shirt. The green one.
The Seeds of Peace t-shirt?
Yeah.
I remember his voice message back then. It was so funny. I think I have it on my computer. It starts like, "'Allo, 'allo, 'allo". And you think that Aseel is really answering. And he's like, "I don't hear you, raise your voice."
I listened to it after he died and it was so hard for me to hear his voice, to hear him alive.
Many Palestinians refer to the October 2000 events as a turning point. Was it like that for you? Did your brother's death change your feelings about Israel and the Jewish community?
I have a problem with Zionism. I don't have a problem with Jews.
And did you feel differently before Aseel died?
We have been raised to love our homeland and be patriots for all our lives. Palestine - this is not new. My dad was a political prisoner for five years in the 1970s and he and my mum were active all their lives.
So this was not a moment that changed things for you?
No, no. But for me, it was like they broke all the boundaries. They took everything, even hope.
I don't believe there is a chance for peace here. It's not that I don't want it - I want it - but I don't believe that it' s possible, not in the current situation ... because of the government and the people [who] support the government and that's the problem.
Ten years have passed and no one has been prosecuted.
This is the legal system of Israel, okay? If Israel committed these crimes, she won't accuse, because she sent those soldiers to kill. This is an apartheid regime for me.
Are you angry?
I'm full of anger and I'm not ashamed of that. I have every right to be angry. I have been angry all my life. As a Palestinian, I have to be. I have to be angry about what happened in 1948, and I have to be angry about what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank and the refugee camps. I am also angry at the international [community] - how come you are all civilized and you talk about human rights and no one cares what is happening here?
But I also have anger towards my own people because I expect more of them, I want more.
What do you want?
I want them to care more. I don't want them to be afraid to go to protests and to bring their child with them. I don't want them to be afraid to face Israel. I think this is a battle we need to go through. You need to fight for your rights and you need to fight for your freedom. No one is going to do that for you. And I know it might cost us a lot, but it cost my brother's life. And there - this is what it takes. We need to lose something.
And I don't want to remember Aseel and the other martyrs only once a year .... We need to bring everything into awareness, into the kids' awareness, and into the schools and the homes. This has to stay in our minds all the time.
