The terrible killing of Dr Mai Afana at a checkpoint north of Abu Dis on 16th May.
Please sign the petition here.
This week, our friends in Abu Dis are in deep grief following the killing of a young woman who was killed at Hizma checkpoint on Wednesday 16th June. Dr Mai Afana was a young lecturer who had just completed her doctorate and had a young daughter. She left her daughter with her mother and set off for work in Ramallah but she did not get past Hizma checkpoint. The Israelis said that she was driving towards soldiers trying to kill them, but the local community who know Mai and her energy and interest in life do not believe this at all and say that this is always the army’s story- they expect complete impunity for the person who killed her and those who stood by as she died. There was apparently an Israeli ambulance nearby but they did not come to help. The Israelis have taken her body and not returned it to the family (she is now apparently among 81 bodies being held by Israel) and her community are convulsed with grief.
AN ABU DIS CAMPAIGN
The people of Abu Dis have put up a solidarity tent for Mai in the middle of Abu Dis, and have spent the last few days grieving, supporting the family, protesting, marching, demonstrating, giving letters to the Israelis at the checkpoint calling for Mai’s body back, and asking the international community – to raise two issues as loudly as possible:
1 – The need to have the bodies of Mai and Ahmed returned to their families so they can bury them.
2 – The on-going threat posed by having military checkpoints all over the country in civilian areas– over 500 of them across the West Bank, which our friends have decided to call “deathpoints.” – and the huge number of killings resulting from military occupation.FILM FROM THE PROTEST TENT
https://www.facebook.com/MaydanAlquds/videos/3975396089222236 This video is made in the protest tent in Abu Dis and includes Dr Mai’s husband and her young daughter.
https://www.facebook.com/AlQastalps/videos/493138745286841 This video shows Abed from Abu Dis talking (in Arabic) from the solidarity tent, protesting against her killing and against the existence of the “deathpoints”: the hundreds of military checkpoints across Palestine which have killed hundreds of Palestinian young people in the past few years (they have to go through them in between the Palestinian “ghettos”, and many are killed and many others arrested) and against the on-going violations and deep racism (apartheid) that dominate Palestinian life under Israeli occupation. He says that it is not possible to live properly stuck between these checkpoints and under the apartheid imposed on the Palestinian people that Palestinians are one, whether in the West Bank, Gaza or Haifa or Yaffa, although the Zionist movement divides them and mistreats them, and all of them are calling for their human rights.
The people of Abu Dis have put up a solidarity tent for Mai in the middle of Abu Dis, and have spent the last few days grieving, supporting the family, protesting, marching, demonstrating, giving letters to the Israelis at the checkpoint calling for Mai’s body back, and asking the international community – to raise two issues as loudly as possible:
1 – The need to have the bodies of Mai and Ahmed returned to their families so they can bury them.
2 – The on-going threat posed by having military checkpoints all over the country in civilian areas– over 500 of them across the West Bank, which our friends have decided to call “deathpoints.” – and the huge number of killings resulting from military occupation.FILM FROM THE PROTEST TENT
https://www.facebook.com/MaydanAlquds/videos/3975396089222236 This video is made in the protest tent in Abu Dis and includes Dr Mai’s husband and her young daughter.
https://www.facebook.com/AlQastalps/videos/493138745286841 This video shows Abed from Abu Dis talking (in Arabic) from the solidarity tent, protesting against her killing and against the existence of the “deathpoints”: the hundreds of military checkpoints across Palestine which have killed hundreds of Palestinian young people in the past few years (they have to go through them in between the Palestinian “ghettos”, and many are killed and many others arrested) and against the on-going violations and deep racism (apartheid) that dominate Palestinian life under Israeli occupation. He says that it is not possible to live properly stuck between these checkpoints and under the apartheid imposed on the Palestinian people that Palestinians are one, whether in the West Bank, Gaza or Haifa or Yaffa, although the Zionist movement divides them and mistreats them, and all of them are calling for their human rights.