Existence is Resistance sends our deepest condolences to the Tamimi family, the village of Nabi Saleh and to the nation of Palestine for the loss of our dear brother Mustafa Tamimi.
Mustafa Tamimi was a 28 year old man from the village of Nabi Saleh who was critically injured when an Israeli soldier fired a tear gas canister ten meters away which hit him in his face. He was unarmed and passed away from the injuries the next day.
Nabi Saleh is a small village in the West Bank with a population slightly over 500 whose residents have been facing constant harassment by Israeli settlers and soldiers.
In 2009, Israeli fanatics from the settlement of Halamish took control over a vital water spring owned by a Palestinian member of the village and denied access to this spring and the surrounding land to the owners and villagers of Nabi Saleh.
This illegal seizure and theft led to the people of Nabi Saleh staging weekly demonstrations every Friday where Israeli troops in defense of these settlers have fired tear gas, rubber bullets, even live ammunition and have murdered demonstrators. Mustafa Tamimi was the latest victims.
In February of 2011, volunteers with human rights group B’Tselem filmed actions of IDF soldiers, who came to the homes of Arab residents in Nabi Saleh, woke all the children over the age of 10 and photographed them.
According to a B’Tselem report released in September 2011 Israel’s security forces have infringed the rights of the Palestinian demonstrators in Nabi Saleh in three fundamental ways. – Violation of the right to demonstrate. B’Tselem’s documentation indicates that Israel does not recognize the right of a-Nabi Saleh’s residents to demonstrate. Israeli security forces declares the demonstration illegal at the outset, sometimes even before the procession begins. The Israeli military routinely issues orders declaring the entire village a closed military area, blocks the roads leading to it, thus denying people coming from outside the village their right to join in the demonstration. – Harm to the civilian population. The army and the Border Police handles the demonstration deploying great amount of forces at the main intersection of the village and using a disproportionate amount of means to disperse the demonstrations. This occurs also when the demonstrators are nonviolent and pose no threat. The forces fire enormous quantities of tear gas inside the built-up area of the village, which is home to hundreds of persons. – restrictions on movement in the area that creates difficulties for residents of all the nearby villages every Friday.
[To a killer] If you had contemplated the victim’s face
And thought it through, you would have remembered your mother in the
Gas chamber, you would have been freed from the reason for the rifle
And you would have changed your mind: this is not the way
to find one’s identity again. – Under Siege by Poet Mahmoud Darwish
