CPTnet
12 July 2012
AL-KHALIL: Palestinians protest turnstile
installation at military checkpoint
The Israeli military installed a turnstile at a checkpoint
on 9 July in Al-Khalil’s Al Salaymeh neighborhood. Sixty Palestinians from the
neighborhood gathered to protest. The protest began peacefully, but ended with
one Palestinian man detained, many children shoved and yelled at and threats of
arrest from the Israeli military.
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| Tensions escalate at protest |
The protest included 35 children, two of them in
wheelchairs. The protesters became agitated and gathered around the soldiers as
they installed the turnstile. Soon the number of soldiers grew to sixteen. As
tension increased, four armored Israeli police vehicles arrived with fourteen police.
Adult Palestinian men engaged the police in heated conversation.
Israeli soldiers
grabbed a Palestinian man, approximately twenty years old, and shoved him against
an Israeli vehicle. They then turned him over to police. This happened without
any physical provocation from the young Palestinian. The police put him into
their vehicle where they detained him for 25 minutes.
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| Turnstile at checkpoint 60 in Al-Khalil |
During that time an
additional fifteen soldiers arrived. The soldiers and police threatened to
arrest others if they did not leave. They then divided the crowd, pushing them
in opposite directions.
On and off throughout the event, Palestinian children
as young as six years old moved up against the soldiers. The soldiers responded
by physically grabbing, pushing and yelling at the children.
Once the soldiers
divided the crowd and threatened to arrest anyone staying in the area, the
Palestinians slowly dispersed.
