by Joe Catron
30 January 2012 | The Electronic Intifada
Obada Saed Bilal and Nili Zahi Safad (Joe Catron)
“This is the life of Palestinian people,” Obada Saed Bilal said one recent morning. “If I hadn’t been detained, I would have been wounded or martyred. I was in detention for over nine years, but I still resist. My marriage and university studies are my ways to keep fighting now.”
Obada and his wife, Nili Zahi Safad, sat in the lobby of the Commodore Gaza Hotel. The Ministry of Detainees in Gaza has temporarily housed them there, along with a number of other former political prisoners who, like Bilal, were freed in the prisoner exchange on 18 October 2011.
Israel forced Bilal, a native of Nablus in the West Bank, to relocate to Gaza following his release, along with 204 other prisoners expelled from their homes in the West Bank.
Safad moved to Gaza shortly after her husband’s arrival. They had been married for only twenty days when his arrest separated them on 16 April 2002.
“I was brutally beaten for two hours,” Bilal said, recalling the 1am military raid in the West Bank village of Aghwar in which he was detained. “Then I was taken to the Petach Tikva detention center in Tel Aviv. They interrogated me for ninety days. This was my most difficult time as a prisoner. I was kept in isolation, handcuffed and blindfolded, and interrogated for about twelve hours every day.”
After his interrogation, the Israeli authorities sent Bilal to Ashkelon, where a military court sentenced him to 26 years.
Isolation
Safad, also a former political prisoner, told a similar story.
“I was detained at a checkpoint,” she said of her arrest on 11 November 2009. “I was returning from Hebron to Nablus, when they arrested me and sent me to detention. They kept me in isolation for ninety days before transferring me to the HaSharon prison for women. About 17 women were detained at HaSharon then; now there are only seven.
“While being interrogated, women are treated exactly like the men,” she added. “We were deprived of food, sleep and even access to the toilet. They shouted insults at us. I was kept handcuffed and blindfolded. Once they chained my hands to the ceiling for four days.”
Bilal and Safad told The Electronic Intifada that their conditions barely improved after they were transferred to prisons following their ninety-day interrogation periods.
“Our daily life was harsh and difficult,” Bilal said. “Our basic human and medical needs were routinely denied. The jailers treated us poorly, the food was awful and we were routinely denied any contact with our families. I wasn’t able to see mine for three years. We were kept handcuffed for ten hours a day, and only given one hour for recreation. Sometimes they punished us by denying even this.”
The Israeli authorities seemed determined to prevent contact with family members inside the prison. “Once I met my two brothers in prison. But when the jailers learned that we were brothers, they separated us,” Bilal said. “And when my wife was arrested, I asked to be placed with her, but the prison administration refused.” Their reunion seemed less likely after Safad completed her sentence and was released on 10 July 2011.
Renewed vows
The authorities also tried to prevent inmates from forming any bonds with each other. “They transferred us among prisons only to confuse us. As soon as we made new friends, they would transfer us again. This was psychological punishment,” Bilal explained.
He had a problem with his eyesight before his arrest, and it became worse in prison. “But they refused to treat it,” he said. “It deteriorated until I couldn’t see at all.”
The International Middle East Media Center reported in late November that there were at least forty persons living with disabilities, such as Bilal’s blindness, among the prisoner population. Many prisoners have died due to systematic medical negligence and torture (“Forty disabled Palestinians are imprisoned by Israel,” 30 November 2011).
Today, Bilal and Safad’s lives go on in a new city, far from their families and community in Nablus.
Bilal, an An-Najah National University public relations student when arrested, has returned to his studies, this time in politics and religion at the Islamic University of Gaza. He and Safad continue supporting Bilal’s brothers, Moad and Othman, both current political prisoners.
The couple also marked the end of their separation by renewing their marriage vows. “We held another wedding party after I was released and my wife came to Gaza, to celebrate our life and resistance,” Bilal said. “This is our message to the world, that we must celebrate our struggle and keep fighting.”
Joe Catron is an international solidarity activist and boycott, divestment, and sanctions organizer in Gaza. He blogs at joecatron.wordpress.com and tweets at @jncatron.
29 January 2012 | The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat
Khader Adnan, an imprisoned Palestinian activist and a spokesperson for the Islamic Jihad party, has been on an ongoing hunger strike since December 17. He is facing severe health consequences for his 43-day hunger strike and needs international support and solidarity to publicize his case and that of his nearly 5,000 fellow Palestinian political prisoners inside the jails of the Israeli occupation. He was transferred today to a hospital and is continuing to refuse food, awaiting the arrival of two Palestinian doctors. He is currently in a wheelchair because he cannot walk, due to weakness from his hunger strike.
Addameer details the experience of Khader Adnan with the Israeli occupation. He is currently held under administrative detention (arbitrary detention without charge or trial, based on secret evidence, and renewable indefinitely for repeated periods of up to six months.) Khader Adnan was issued a four-month administrative detention order on January 8, and faces another military court hearing on January 30. This is the eighth time Adnan has been detained, and he has served a total of six years in Israeli prisons – mostly without charge or trial under the administrative detention scheme.
Addameer reports:
Khader was arrested on 17 December 2011, when Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) raided his home outside Jenin at 3:30 am. Before entering his house, soldiers used the driver that takes Khader’s father to the vegetable market, Mohammad Mustafa, as a human shield by forcing him to knock on the door of the house and call out Khader’s name while blindfolded. A huge force of soldiers then entered the house shouting. Recognizing Khader immediately, they grabbed him violently in front of his two young daughters and ailing mother.
The soldiers blindfolded him and tied his hands behind his back using plastic shackles before leading him out of his house and taking him to a military jeep. Khader was then thrown on his back and the soldiers began slapping him in the face and kicking his legs. They kept him lying on his back until they reached Dutan settlement, beating him on the head throughout the 10-minute drive. When they reached the settlement, Khader was pushed aggressively out of the jeep. Because of the blindfold, Khader did not see the wall right in front of him and smashed into it, causing injuries to his face.
Following his arrest, he was taken to interrogation, refused medical care and treatment, subject to physical abuse and mistreatment including being tied to a chair in a stressful position, causing extreme back pain, and pulling on his beard so hard that his hair was ripped out. Khader was subjected to abusive language about his family, and refused to speak any further to interrogators, as well as refusing food. In retaliation, he was placed into isolation and solitary confinement, denied family visits, awakened in the middle of the night and strip-searched. He has refused to end his strike, protesting the illegitimacy of his arbitrary detention by an illegal occupation authority as well as cruel and inhumane treatment and abuse.
This is not his first hunger strike – in 2005 he protested his isolation in Kfar Yuna with a 12-day hunger strike. Khader Adnan’s hunger strike has sparked solidarity tents in Gaza, and a planned protest in Ramallah on January 30.
Ahmad Sa’adat and hundreds of other Palestinian prisoners participated in a 23-day hunger strike in October 2011, demanding an end to isolation, abuse, and denial of family visits; Israeli promises to end isolation, aimed to secure the end of the strike, proved to be false, as Sa’adat has now spent nearly three full years inside an isolation cell.
The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat calls for solidarity with Khader Adnan and all of the steadfast prisoners inside the jails of the Israeli occupation who daily confront with their bodies and their lives the ongoing attacks of the occupation army and prison guards.
Addameer has issued a call to action - we encourage you to take up Addameer’s call, linked here, and also:
Picket, protest or call the Israeli embassy or consulate in your location and demand the immediate freedom of Khader Adnan, Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian political prisoners. Make it clear that you are watching the situation of Khader Adnan and that Israel is responsible for his health and life, and demand an end to the use of isolation, solitary confinement, and administrative detention. Send us reports of your protests at Israeli embassies and consulates at campaign@freeahmadsaadat.org.
Write to the International Committee of the Red Cross and other human rights organizations to exercise their responsibilities and act swiftly to demand that the prisoners’ demands are implemented. Email the ICRC, whose humanitarian mission includes monitoring the conditions of prisoners, at JER_jerusalem@icrc.org, and inform them about the urgent situation of Khader Adnan. Make it clear that arbitrary detention without charge or trial is unacceptable, and that the ICRC must act to protect Palestinian prisoners from cruel and inhumane treatment.
by Yousef M. Aljamal
30 January 2012 | Centre for Political and Development Studies
For the third week in a row, the Centre for Political and Development Studies (CPDS), a Gaza-based think tank, held a video link to explore issues related to the Palestinian cause, with the presence of Palestinian and international activists. Huwaida Arraf, the co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement, chair of the Free Gaza Movement, and a prominent Palestinian-American activist, talked to Gaza activists about “The Palestine solidarity movement: Countering Zionist propaganda globally.”
Choosing discourse to communicate with others is one of the basic requirements to get one’s voice heard. Zionists have mastered this, while Palestinians have been misrepresented in the West. Ironically, Palestine’s just story isn’t getting out. “Through the years we have not done a very good job of conveying our plight, and that’s largely because telling our story was left to our ‘official spokespeople’ who didn’t know how to communicate well with the western media”, said Arraf. “On the other side, Israel depends largely on PR, a fundamental part of its strategy. One of the biggest propaganda projects is The Israel Project. Its annual budget for last year alone was eleven million dollars. This is not counting the official support of the Israeli government, companies, and AIPAC”.
“Israel is losing the PR battle for various reasons: law and justice are on our side, there is an increasing awareness among Palestinians, the growth of alternative media like Facebook and Twitter, and, I believe, the effect of the International Solidarity Movement”, Arraf continued.
The second Palestinian Intifada, which was characterized by Israel’s aggression against Palestinian civilians and the role of the media in covering it, pushed Arraf, with the help of other colleagues, to found ISM. It grew to include 8,000 activists, who have worked hard to expose Israel’s grievous and vivid violations of human rights in Occupied Palestine.
“One of the reasons we founded ISM was because we noticed what was happening in terms of Israel’s massive use of violence”, said Arraf. “The media was not portraying the truth of what was happening. We realised that the Palestinian civil society, and Palestinians as a whole, especially after Oslo, needed a resource to be able to stand up and confront what Israel is doing”.
ISM turned out to be something practical, not merely a plan on paper. Its first campaign included 50 people. Since then, over 8,000 activists have actively worked on the ground to help the Palestinian people.
“The first campaign started in August, 2001”, said Arraf. “Fifty people came. We started another campaign. We tried to say the conflict is not about a religion against another. It’s about freedom versus occupation. It’s not Muslims against Jews. We wanted the mass media to know this. ISM aimed at forming advocacy groups and helping the Palestinian people sustain their struggle and get their stories heard”.
Palestinians share values with all other nations, based on tolerance, understanding, and working together for the good of humankind.
“Once, I organised a meeting between a Palestinian farmer from Bodrous village in the West Bank, named Ayed Murra, and a Vermont senator on Capitol Hill”, said Arraf. “We talked about how the wall affects farmers in the West Bank. We spent an hour talking to the senator, who lives in an area full of farmers”.
Israel tries to tell the world that the entire Palestinian movement is Hamas. They play on an anti-Islamic atmosphere in the West. This clearly distorts history and the facts on the grounds.
“Hamas was founded in 1987” said Arraf. “What about the ethnic cleansing in 1948 and 1967? Op-eds and articles were written on Hamas accepting a truce with Israel. In 2003, the late Palestinian president, Yasser Arrafat, arranged a ceasefire included all Palestinian factions. In the first two-and-a-half months, Israel killed 74 Palestinians and destroyed 480 Palestinian homes”.
Absence of leadership is one of the things Palestinians are discussing today. “The current leadership does not represent the Palestinian people, particularly who live in the Diaspora”, said Arraf. Elections should be held to represent the Palestinian people as a whole. This will help them win representation for their aspirations and dreams.
“The Palestinian leadership is gone, of course”, said Arraf. “Direct elections to Palestinian National Council should be held. After years of not having a strong Palestinian official voice to be able to refer to in terms of what to do abroad, there came the unification of the Palestinian civil society in the form of BDS”.
“CPDS is looking forward to work hand-in-hand with ISM to help the Palestinian people get heard”, said Dr. Mahmoud Alhirthani, CPDS chairman. “It would be a good idea to organize lectures and courses with your help to make this idea a success”.
Next Sunday, the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) in the United Kingdom will talk with Gaza activists at CPDS on how to be a good ambassador of Palestine when in the U.K. This link is part of a programme named “For you, Palestine”, aiming at drawing Palestinian people’s attention to global issues that can help them represent their cause.
by Neil
30 January 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
The village of Kufr ad-Dik in the Salfit region of the West Bank has become the latest in a series of villages to launch weekly protests against mass land theft by Israeli occupying forces.
Residents of Kufr ad-Dik took part in their fifth demonstrationon Friday, 27th of January. While this demonstration was short due to weather conditions, the previous demonstration on the 20th of January was much longer. Israeli forces used large amounts of tear gas to repel the protesters before firing more gas directly into the village and using rubber bullets on some remaining demonstrators.
Two ISM activists were the only internationals present at the most recent demonstration, and there were no Israeli activists. This is in spite of the presence of perhaps dozens of internationals and Israelis at the nearby demonstration in Nabi Saleh.
Eighty percent of the land of the village has been confiscated by the Israeli military in the name of security. The village is surrounded by four different settlements as well as a collection of recently built Israeli factories. Israel currently has plans to build a fifth settlement nearby atop a hill.
Eleven houses are currently under demolition orders, some of them for the past three years. A total of twenty-one farm buildings have also been served with demolition orders. So far five of them have been demolished. Most recently, on 17th December, three wells and five rooms belonging to one farmer were destroyed.
The region of Salfit, in which Kufr ad-Dik is situated is extremely important to Israel both because of its possession of significant water resources. Its location comes at at a point where the border separating 1948 lands and Palestinian villages is quite thin. There are currently eighteen illegal Israeli settlements in the Salfit region, but only eleven Palestinian villages.
Neil is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed.)
27 January 2012 | Stop the JNF Campaign
The Jewish National Fund has designated Sunday 5th February as ‘Green Sunday’, when it encourages people to donate money to ‘plant trees in Israel’. The JNF claims to have environmental objectives. Don’t be taken in. The JNF’s tree planting is a cover for ethnic cleansing.
The JNF exists to acquire land in Israel/Palestine for the sole use of Jewish people. For more than 100 years, the JNF has been complicit in expulsions of Palestinians from their homes, the destruction of their villages and prevention of the return of refugees – by planting trees over the remnants of the destroyed homes.
Environmentalists are asked to use the opportunity of the JNF’s ‘Green Sunday’ to take a stand against this greenwash, when ethnic cleansing masquerades as environmental action. Don’t support the JNF’s ‘Green Sunday’, but publicly denounce the JNF.
Environmental groups throughout the world are adding their support to the international call from Palestinian civil society to Stop the JNF.
Don’t support the JNF’s ‘Green Sunday’. Instead, use the opportunity to:
by Dylan Collins
28 January 2012 | The Palestine Monitor
In a hazy room, clouded with cigarette smoke and steam from hot syrup-sweat tea, residents of Kafr ad-Dik and its neighboring villages, along with Palestinian, Israeli, and international activists, excitedly gathered together waiting for the midday prayer to finish. The twenty-seventh of January marked the fourth Friday during which the village of Kafr ad-Dik has staged a nonviolent protest against the annexation of its agricultural land by the Israeli Occupation Authority (IOA).
The village of Kafr ad-Dik, and the greater Salfit District, is located on top of the largest water table in the West Bank, thus providing it with some of the most fertile land in the region. Home to generations upon generations of farmers, Kafr ad-Dik, and the neighboring villages of Rafat, Balut, and Bruqin, have had the majority of their agricultural land stripped away from them in the last ten years by the IOA. In turn unemployment and poverty rates in the farming-based community have skyrocketed.
In a village of which 99% of the inhabitants are olive farmers, the IOA’s annexation of the majority Kafr ad-Dik’s groves has been devastating.
Approximately 4,000 dunams of vital agricultural land, shared by the four villages, has been appropriated by the IOA over the past ten years. Last month, the IOA significantly increased its total of annexed land in the area when it earmarked an additional 1,000 dunums for the alleged expansion of the nearby illegal Israeli outost, Ale Zahav. Kafr ad-Dik residents, however, are convinced this latest annexation of land will be allocated to the construction of an entirely new outpost.
Left with no land to farm, and consequently no source of income, Kafr ad-Dik’s farmers have been forced to either rent out small plots from farmers who still have access to their lands in neighboring villages, or work their own land, now owned by the illegal Israeli settlements, for a paltry wage of around $13 a day.
Popular resistance, in the form of weekly nonviolent marches and demonstrations, has become increasingly commonplace in many West Bank villages since the beginning of the IOA’s construction of the Separation Wall and its subsequent seizure of Palestinian land. Villages such as Bil’in, Ni’lin and, more recently, Nabi Saleh have been the vanguard of the West Banks popular resistance movement over the last few years, with the media giving little to no focus to villages outside the spotlight.
As illegal Israeli settlements continue their unhindered expansion with impunity, robbing Palestinians of their land and livelihood on a daily basis, similar popular resistance demonstrations are popping up in villages all over the West Bank. In order for the new popular resistance efforts to be effective, it is imperative that media sources lend their ears more equitably to the growing number of villages cooperatively combating the occupation.
Nasfar Qufesh, the coordinator for the Popular Committee in the Salfit District, is insistent upon the fact that widespread, disciplined popular nonviolent resistance, represents the strongest means by which West Bank villages can resist the occupation. He says the aim of popular resistance is to, “create awareness in western countries, particularly America, of how, and for what purposes, their hard earned tax money is used.”
The Israeli Occupation Force’s (IOF) blatant use of excessive force during the weekly nonviolent protests throughout the West Bank, via mass amounts of tear gas, rubber bullets, sound grenades, and live ammunition, is an excellent example of American tax dollars hard at work. The US furnishes Israel with over three billion dollars a year in military aid alone, most of which is made up of non-repayable grants.
Although still in its nascent stages, the popular resistance in Kafr ad-Dik is growing. Community leaders predict similar movements to fan out across West Bank villages as a main method of confronting the occupation and its confiscation of their land.
by Shazia Arshad
29 January 2012 | Middle East Monitor
As candidates prepared for elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) in 2006, the Israeli authorities began a campaign of detention and imprisonment to thwart the growing move towards democracy in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The Israeli authorities began to arrest members of Hamas: 450 were detained in 2005 to prevent their participation in the election the following year; many were held in administrative detention, without trial or charge. Despite this the elections took place and a number of the candidates in prison were elected to the PLC.
The 2006 Palestinian elections were overseen by international observers, who declared them to be free and fair (more open, it has been said, than the 2004 re-election of George W Bush). Hamas ended up as the democratically-elected Palestinian government. A number of PLC members under the Change and Reform List (including Hamas members and supporters) were also chosen by the electorate and became the target of the Israeli authorities’ constant campaign of arrest and detention.
There are, at the moment, 27 PLC members and 2 Ministers being detained by the Israeli authorities.
29 January 2012 | Global March to Jerusalem
Join us as we intensify our struggle against forced exile and the system of Israeli apartheid on Land Day 2012. We Palestinians have been ethnically cleansed and uprooted from our lands starting in the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) which resulted in the creation of the millions of refugees who are now living in the Diaspora. Nineteen years later, in 1967, Israel illegally annexed East-Jerusalem and the West Bank in a move which marked the Naksa (Setback), and subjected the remaining Palestinians to a brutal military occupation.
We are now in 2012, and we are still living in exile or under the Israeli apartheid regime, the illegal construction of colonial settlements is confiscating the remaining parts of Palestine, the Separation Wall divides and separates villages and towns, and Palestinians in Jerusalem are threatened of being driven out of their homes and lands for the mere purpose of the Judaization of this sacred city.
But we will not leave. We will stand and be firm. We will not permit thousands of years of our attachment to our land and our Holy City to be broken. We therefore invite and call upon all persons of courage and good will around the world to stand up and walk, with your fellow human beings, regardless of religion, of political affiliation – to stand up as responsible human beings and walk peacefully towards Jerusalem on the 30th of March, 2012.
We therefore ask all our brothers and sisters throughout the world to join Palestinians on Land Day, 30 March, 2011, in challenging the barriers, borders and procedures that separate Palestinians from Jerusalem and from their homes and lands in all of historic Palestine.
Palestinian National and Islamic Organizations
Al-Rowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Centre
Al-Walaja Popular Resistance Committee
The Alternative Information Center – AIC
BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights
Beit Ummar Popular Resistance Committee
Bil’in Popular Resistance Committee
Friends of Freedom and Justice, Bil’in
Handala Center
Holy Land Trust
International Solidarity Movement
Nabi Saleh Popular Resistance Committee
Ni’lin Popular Resistance Committee
Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement between People
Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign
Palestine Justice Network
Palestine Solidarity Project
Popular Struggle Coordinating Committee
Siraj Center for Holy Land Studies
Youth Against Settlements (Hebron)
Youth Activity Center
28 January 2012 | WAFA News Agency
Israeli forces delivered home demolition notices to two Palestinian homeowners in al-Ma’sara, a village south of Bethlehem, under the pretext that they were built without a permit in an area under full Israel control, said head of the village council Samir Zawahra on Saturday.
He said Israeli soldiers placed the notices near the two houses, which were in their final stage of construction.
Zawahra accused the Israeli authorities of plotting to empty the area of its Palestinian residents in order to take over the land for the benefit of nearby settlements.
He said the Israeli escalation comes in the wake of the weekly non-violent demonstration in the village to protest settlement expansion and the construction of the Apartheid Wall on village land.
R.Q./M.S.
27 January 2012 | Chroniques de Palestine
Click here for more images - (c) Anne Paq/Activestills.org, Arab al Jahalin, Anata, 26.01.2012
How do you continue your life after your home had been demolished? How do you cope with the uncertainty of having a roof for your children and protect them from the cold and rain?
On the 23rd January, 6 homes of the community of the Arab al Jahalin, members of the biggest Bedouin tribe in the West Bank, in Anata were demolished in the middle of the night leaving more than 50 people homeless, many of them children. More demolitions are coming: more than 2,000 members of the Arab al Jahalin, who are scattered mostly around Jerusalem are threatened with forced displacement; one of the locations “proposed” by the Israeli authorities is a garbage dump in El Azzariya.
I visited the community two days after the demolition. The children and women were helplessly sitting around. The personal belongings were all scattered around. The men were trying to pick up the pieces of their homes and lives and already were starting building up a new home out of woods and tins. Some tents were provided by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) but there is not enough to protect from the rain and cold.
The next day I went back. All the people were busy cleaning and rebuilding. Some volunteers- Palestinians, Israelis and internationals were here helping out. People were not sitting around being miserable, they were up in their feet, rebuilding. This is what Palestinians do, whatever Israel destroys, they get up on their feet and rebuild. Children were also participating, moving the stones around, the women were also cleaning and sorting out the furniture. One home was just finished. More woods structure arrived and we started to erect a second house after a beautiful lunch. Smiles were seen all around, children laughed with the volunteers. A broken bike was still being used by the children, they were carrying it around but could not get on it. I guess they were just pretending that they did not notice it was broken. But can they also pretend that their homes were not demolished?
These children were just so amazing. Today it is raining and I cannot stop thinking about them. I know they are strong, I know they pick up the piece and just go on living, not thinking one minute of leaving despite the fact that they know the Israelis will come back.
“To exist is to resist”, and the reverse is also so true: “to resist is to exist”. For sure they do: by refusing to be intimidated and thrown into a garbage dump, by rebuilding and not giving up one inch, they become part of the invisible unarmed and resolute army that is standing up against the oppressive regime that is attempting to silently ethnically cleansed them.
They are strong but they should not be alone in their fight. Direct help is needed to ensure they rebuild what they need, more political pressure and actions are also needed to raise awareness about forced displacement. If the international community do not act now, this slow ethnic cleansing is likely to increase in the next months.
by Melinda Tuhus
24 January 2012 | In These Times
Behind the headlines, Palestinians are using nonviolent direct action to protest the status quo.
WEST BANK, PALESTINE – On November 15, Mazin Qumsiyeh and other Palestinian activists boarded public bus number 148, an Israelis-only bus that normally takes Jews from the Israeli West Bank settlement of Ariel to Jerusalem. The bus took the group to the Hizma checkpoint, just outside the northern entrance of Jerusalem, where activists resisted authorities’ efforts to remove them. Eventually, as a camera broadcast the action online, eight people were pulled from the bus and arrested. They were charged with “illegal entry to Jerusalem” and “obstructing police business.”
Qumsiyeh hopes this recent “freedom ride” – possible because a bus driver let them ride by mistake, he said – will spark the same kind of response that its namesake did across the United States in the early 1960s, when interstate bus trips helped end racial segregation in the South. Qumsiyeh, author of Popular Resistance in Palestine: A History of Hope and Empowerment says other examples of nonviolent resistance says, include protests of the separation barrier (which many Palestinians call an “apartheid wall”) that has effectively turned 10 percent of Palestinian land into Israeli land since its construction began in 2002; school girls holding class in the street when they can’t get to their schools because of Israeli interference; and farmers braving Israeli intimidation to harvest olives. “For us to exist on this land is to resist,” says Qumsiyeh, who teaches at Bethlehem and Birzeit universities.
Most readers of mainstream media in the United States think of the First Intifada (1987-92) as the stone-throwing uprising and the Second Intifada (2000-2004) as the attack of the suicide bombers. They may have heard of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, started in 2005 by more than 170 Palestinian civil society groups. (The movement aims to curtail benefits accruing to businesses that benefit from the occupation.) But few are aware of Palestinians’ longstanding creative efforts to use nonviolent direct action in their struggle for self-determination. Those efforts, from the tax revolt in Beit Sahour during the First Intifada to creative actions led by Palestinians like Qumsiyeh, are often supported by both international and Israeli activists. And they are proliferating.
Ghassan Andoni, cofounder of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and a leader of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement between People, says nonviolent direct action by Palestinians opposed to the Israeli occupation started before the First Intifada. “Activities included throwing military identity cards issued by the occupation as a way to tell the occupier that we don’t recognize your authority and there is no contract between us,” Andoni said in an interview in Bethlehem in mid-November. “Then we stopped paying taxes and submitting monthly reports saying, ‘No taxation without representation.’”
The First Intifada also saw the creation of autonomous communities all over the West Bank. “We established our own economy to detach from the occupation,” Andoni explained. Large protest marches and solidarity campaigns were also organized with international activists and Israelis. ISM has staged “die-ins” in front of Israeli tanks, and its members have chained themselves to homes the Israeli government wants to demolish, and obstructed the Israeli army from imposing a curfew. As popular resistance among Palestinians has spread, Andoni increasingly sees ISM’s role as supporting local nonviolent initiatives.
Bil’in, a village near Ramallah, is one such initiative. Residents of Bil’in have mobilized against Israel’s West Bank security barrier. Since construction of the fence began there in 2005, villagers have staged various events. After the release of the film Avatar, with its story line of the occupation of Pandora and the rape of its resources, Palestinians painted themselves blue to look like Pandorans. On another occasion, they lugged a television to the fence and cheered their favorite teams during a World Cup tournament to show that normal life would go on.
Bil’in activists photograph and videotape every protest. “The camera is our gun,” says Iyad Burnat, who heads the resistance committee in the village. In 2011 the barrier was moved a short distance away from its initial location in Bil’in, on orders from the Israeli High Court. But much of the village remains on the Israeli side of the fence, and protests continue.
What is the ultimate goal of nonviolent action, beyond stopping the security wall and ending the occupation? “One state or two states?” is not the right question to start with, Qumsiyeh says. “The right question to ask is, ‘What is the right thing to do that will guarantee the safety and security and peace and humanity of everybody in the long run?’ Once we can agree, we’ll work toward that.”
Melinda Tuhus is an independent journalist with 25 years of experience in print and radio, including In These Times, The New York Times, Free Speech Radio News and public radio stations.
24 January 2012 | International Solidarity Movement
Image from Poica.org - Click here for more information
In a peaceful demonstration into the Gaza buffer zone that began around 10:30am today, January 24 2012, demonstrators report that at least 50 rounds of live ammunition were fired directly at Palestinian and international solidarity activists.
Contact:
Nathan Stuckey, International Solidarity Movement activist
Phone Number: 00970597650864
Email: GazaISM@gmail.com
At least two Israeli soldiers have been visible on the ground, while a large military tank also took position approximately 15 minutes following the initial shooting of live ammunition. With a momentary pause in gunfire that lasted for approximately 15 minutes, shooting of live ammunition has resumed in Gaza’s No Go Zone. At least 50 bullets have been shot thus far.
Every Tuesday Palestinians and supporters march from Beit Hanoun into the buffer zone , where the fertile land has been made inaccessible to Palestinians due to the imminent danger of violence by the guarding Israeli military, who also bulldoze land that has been an agricultural resource for many locals in the northern Gaza Strip.23 January 2012 | US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
A collective of students in Gaza has formed the Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel (PSCABI). These students are seeking to expand their collaboration and participation in events and activities with solidarity activists at international universities.
PSCABI members participate in many activities here in Gaza and are heavily involved in supporting the international student solidarity movements, especially with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaigns. PSCABI members frequently write letters out of Gaza, some of which we have listed below, encouraging people to participate in the boycott and thanking people who have supported the Palestinian cause.
PSCABI members are available to share ideas, participate via Skype or other technology in remote events, organize and strategize together, hear about your activities and provide information and narratives as Palestinian university students for your distribution, and provide access to voices speaking directly from besieged Gaza.
If you are interested in:
please contact us at pscabi@usacbi.org.
Past Letters from PSCABI:
An Open Letter from Palestinian Students to their Peers in Europe An Open letter from Besieged Gaza to Brothers for Brotherhood: No Brotherhood with Apartheid! Open Letter from Gaza Students to the European Students’ Union: Oppose Apartheid and War Crimes Letter from Gaza Academics and Students: Eight American Universities Normalize Occupation, Colonization and Apartheid! An Open Letter from Besieged Gaza to Pete Seeger: Don’t Legitimize Apartheid Open Letter to John Lydon: ‘Rise’ against Racism Gaza Students Condemn Eilat Funjoya Student Festival An Open Letter to Chick Corea: Don’t Turn Your Back on Gazaby Rosa Schiano
22 January 2012 | il Blog di Oliva
Israeli Apaches and land forces shelled an area east of Beit Hanoun, in the northern Gaza Strip, on Wednesday morning, January 18 2012.
Two young men were killed and another was injured. As we hurried to the scene we met an ambulance driving at high speed. Upon arriving we heard immediately that one of the young men, 20 year old Mohammed Shaker Abu Auda, had died instantly, while the other man was rushed to the hospital.
We went to the Beit Hanoun hospital morgue, and we saw the massacred body of Mohammed. While we were at the morgue we heard that the other young man was in critical condition at Kamal Adwan Hospital. While we were moving to that hospital, we learned that Ahmed Khaled Abu Murad Al-Zaaneen, 17 years-old, had also died.
We waited for his funeral.
Mohammed Shaker Abu Auda, martyred at the age of 20
Family members and friends told us that the two young men went near the border to find building materials to sell. The poorest youth of Gaza frequently go to the border, in the so-called no go zone of 300 meters imposed by Israel, to find building material to sell.
They also told us that the two young men were catching birds.
The body of Ahmed was at about 300-400 meters from the border.
Click here to view the embedded video.
Saber Zaaneen of the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative told us that Ahmed was losing blood from his head but that “he was still alive, he was breathing heavily” when he found him.
The ambulance could not reach the body of Ahmed immediately because tanks and soldiers were continuing to shoot and it was too dangerous to approach the area.
The ambulance was forced to back away because of the continuous fire.
The entire time the father of Ahmed was crying, “I want to see my son! I want to see my son!”
Ahmed was still alive when he reached the ambulance.
The day after, we went to the mourning tent and we met the families of the two victims.
Ahmed’s mother did not stop crying. I remained seated with her and the other women of the family, silently, I was speechless at so much pain.
Then we went to the other mourning tent. Here, the brother of Mohammed, Zahor Abu Auda, told us that the two young men were catching birds to sell them for pets.
If they were lucky, they made 100 shekels from the sale of the birds (100 shekels are equivalent to about 20 euros).
His mother can’t walk, Mohammed took care of her.
Zahor told us, “Let the world know that the Israelis killed a man that was only trying to get money to live. The Israeli forces, supported by the Americans. kill people in Gaza regularly and nobody hears about it, the world is silent.”
Missile fired by an Israeli Apache during the attack
Meanwhile we knew that Israeli spokespersons were spreading the story that the two victims were armed militants and that they were about to place explosives in the area of the border.
These Israeli declarations and their powerful influence on the mass media induce a feeling of powerlessness. Members of the families and friends told us that Mohammed and Ahmed were not part of armed groups.
Mohammed and Ahmed were civilians, they were just workers.
We join the appeal of Zohar, and we will continue to give a voice to the people of Gaza so that the silence will never completely obscure all of this pain over the agony of the mothers and over the bodies massacred.
Rosa Schiano is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement. You can read more of her writing at il Blog di Oliva.
by Tom
22 January 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
In an action that appears to have been carried out purely for the entertainment and satisfaction of Israeli settlers, the center of the activist group, Youth Against Settlements, in Tel Rumeida, Al Khalil (also known as Hebron) was stormed by Israeli soldiers at 3pm on the afternoon of Saturday 21st January. Organisation leader Issa Amro was briefly arrested and taken away without reason.
Settlers surrounded the Centre of Steadfastness and Challenge, as soldiers broke in and seized Amro while simultaneously seeming to attempt a search of the building.
Amro was forcefully handcuffed behind his back, despite his having a medical condition which means that this should be prohibited; a fact of which Israeli authorities are well aware having detained him on fifteen different occasions last year. He was then blindfolded and taken away to a military base, where he was beaten. Soldiers also threatened to kill him.
Soldiers then proceeded to assault several other activists who were attempting to document the incident, including Badia Dwaik, Tamer Atrash, Hamad Israir and Sundos Assilay, an eighteen-year old girl.
Click here to view the embedded video.
As Amro was taken away, settlers who had gathered for the show cheered triumphantly, spat at him and chanted slogans such as “each Arab dog will have his day.” No reason was given for the arrest and no provocation was made. He was subsequently released without any kind of charge less than half-an-hour later. Many more Jews were visiting the city for Shabbat and the Settler Tour of the old city, and it seems that the army wanted to put on a show for the settlers.
The Youth Against Settlements centre was previously occupied by the Israeli military before being reclaimed for Palestinians in a major victory for the organisation.
Tom is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).
by Shahd Abusalama
21 January 2012 | The Electronic Intifada
My lastest drawing of the Palestinians’ determination to find a way to fight injustices by the Israeli Occupation. (Shahd Abusalama)
If you have the power, you can abuse it and no one will say a word in protest. At least this is the case for Israel, which openly violates international law and human rights feeling secure that one will stop it.
But Khader Adnan, a detainee from Jenin, has decided not to stay silent and accept injustices against him and his fellow prisoners. He is battling armed jailers with his only weapon: his empty stomach. Khader started hunger striking the day of his arrest, December 18, to protest the unjust administrative detention he is serving and the indescribable cruelty he has experienced since then.
My father’s experience of being an administrative detainee
It’s worth mentioning that administrative detention is a procedure the Israeli military uses to hold detainees indefinitely on secret evidence without charging them or allowing them to stand trial. Over 300 Palestinian political prisoners are serving this term now, and tens of thousands of Palestinians have experienced administrative detention since 1967.
My father served this term three times. Previously, he had been sentenced to seven lifetimes plus ten years, but released in the 1985 prisoner exchange after serving thirteen. As I read about Khader’s story in a report by Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, stories about Dad’s experiences in Israeli prisons came back to me.
The last time it happened, a month after I was born in 1991, was the hardest. My mother told me how I came into this life where safety, peace, and justice are not guaranteed. ”In the middle of the night, a huge force of armed Israeli soldiers suddenly broke into our home, damaging everything before them. They attacked your father, bound him with chains, and dragged him to the prison, beating him the whole way.” The happiness of a new baby – me – didn’t continue for the whole family. My traumatized mother was able to breastfeed me for a month, but then she couldn’t anymore; her sorrow ended her lactation.
Every Palestinian is convicted to a life of uncertainty without having to commit a crime. Being a Palestinian is our only offense. For Khader, this detention is not his first time in Israeli prisons. It’s actually his eighth, for a total of six years of imprisonment, all under administrative detention. Each one had a different taste, ranging from bitter to bitterer.
Story of Khader’s Adnan’s arrest
This time, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) raided Khader’s house at 3:00 am using a human shield, Mohammad Mustafa. Mohammad is a taxi driver who always takes Khader’s father to the vegetable market. He was kidnapped by the IOF and forced to knock on Khader’s door while blindfolded. Then the IOF raided Khader’s house, trashing it as they did. Shouting, they aggressively grabbed his father, with no consideration for Khader’s two little daughters, his wife, who could have miscarried her five-month fetus, or his sick mother. But when did IOF have any respect for human values?
Khader was immediately blindfolded, and his hands were tied behind his back with plastic shackles. Afterwards, the soldiers pushed him into a military jeep with non-stop physical torment that continued for the ten-minute drive it took for the jeep to reach Dutan settlement. You can imagine how a short period seemed like forever to Khader, who was unable to move or see while every part of his body was continuously and brutally beaten. To make things even worse, Khader’s face was injured when he smashed in a wall he couldn’t see due to the blindfold wrapping his eyes after he was pushed out of the jeep.
Addamear reported that after Khader’s arrest, he was transferred to different interrogation centers and ended up in Al-jalameh. Upon arriving there, Khader was given a medical exam, where he informed prison doctors of his injuries and told them that he suffered from a gastric illness and disc problems in his back. However, instead of being treated, he was taken to interrogation immediately.
Silence and hunger strike in response to interrogators’ humiliation
The interrogation period, which lasted for ten days, took the form of psychological torture with continuous humiliation using very abusive language about his wife, sister, children, and mother. Throughout the interrogation sessions, his hands were tied behind him on a crooked chair, causing extreme pain to his back. Believing in the power of silence, Khader’s only response was to object to the interrogator’s use of increasingly insulting speech.
Because of Khader’s hunger strike against violations of his rights and the terrible treatment used against him, Addameer reported that he was sentenced to a week in isolation by the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) on the fourth day of interrogation. Moreover, in order to further punish him without being required to go to court, the IPS also banned him from family visits for three months.
In addition, during the second week of interrogation, Khader experienced further humiliations. One interrogator pulled his beard so hard that it ripped hair out. The same interrogator also took dirt from the bottom of his shoe and rubbed it on Khader’s mustache. But they couldn’t break his dignity, and even after the interrogation ended, Khader continued his hunger strike.
According to Addameer report, on the evening of Friday, 30 December 2011, Khader was transferred to Ramleh prison hospital because of his health deteriorating from the hunger strike. But even there, he lacked medical care. He was placed in isolation in the hospital, where he was subject to cold conditions and cockroaches filled his cell. He refused any medical examinations after 25 December, which was one week after he stopped eating and speaking. The prison director came to speak to Khader, or rather threaten him, commenting that they would “break him” eventually.
I know I mentioned before that there are no trials for Palestinian detainees under administrative detention. But actually, they do get a trial. It’s not for them to challenge the reasons for their detention though. It’s for a military judge to decide the period they are going to serve according to the “secret evidence” that IPS holds against him, none of it shared with the detainee or his lawyer. This is an obvious violation of human rights, leaving Khader and detainees like him with no legitimate means to defend themselves.
On 8 January 2012, at Ofer military court, Khader received a four- month administrative detention order. There, he was threatened by members of the Nahshon, a special intervention unit of the IPS known for particularly brutality in their treatment of prisoners, who told Khader that his head should be exploded.
The need to act
Khader’s health is deteriorating rapidly. He is refusing treatment until he is released, but a prison doctor has threatened to force-feed him if he continues. Cameras in his cell watch him at all times, and if he does not move at night, soldiers knock loudly on his door. This prisoner is at risk, so SUPPORT Addamear campaign to call for his release.
People in Gaza set up a tent in front of the Red Cross last Thursday to join Khader’s protest against his administrative detention and violations of Palestinian detainees’ simplest rights, and demand justice and freedom for them. Something must be done against this unjust system and its conditions of imprisonment. International solidarity is greatly needed. Join Addameer’s campaign to Stop Administrative Detention. ACT NOW!
Shahd Abusalama, 20, is a Palestinian artist, a blogger and an English literature student living in Gaza City. She is interested in conveying the images, experience and emotions of the Palestinian people as well as their strength, determination, struggle and suffering. She blogs at Palestine From my Eyes, and she can always be followed at @shahdabusalama.
21 January 2012 | International Solidarity Movement
On Sunday, the 16th of January, at approximately 2 AM, about fifty settlers, accompanied by Israeli soldiers, entered the Abu Haikal family’s field in the neighborhood of Tel Rumeideh in Hebron. After throwing stones at the family’s house, they savagely burnt the car of Hana Haikal, fifty-three years old.
Click here for more images
by Aaron
21 January 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
The mood was celebratory following the weekly protest this Friday in Kufr Qaddoum, after demonstrators succeeded in pushing back Israeli soldiers for the second week in a row. The goal of the protest was to open the main road to regional population center of Nablus, closed since 2003 by the Israeli Occupation Force in spite of international and Israeli courts demanding its reopening. Though the soldiers greeted unarmed protesters with scores of tear gas canisters–many at eye-level, an illegal tactic intended to severely injure and kill–no injuries were reported, and in the end soldiers, and not villagers, withdrew.
Kufr Qaddoum gains momentum - For more pictures click here
A Palestinian village in the West Bank existing since biblical times, Kufr Qaddoum (“koo-fur ka-doom”) is hedged in on most sides by Israeli Jewish settlements, illegal according to international law, the 1993 Oslo Accords, and in some cases even Israeli law. Theft of nearly 2/3 of land associated with these settlements (1100 ha of the 1900 ha pre-1967 original), combined with the Apartheid Wall and closures of multiple access points in the last 12 years, have choked the local economy and driven people from the community (according to POICA and the Land Resource Center). During 2003, in the midst of the Second Intifada, the Israeli military closed off the main road leading to the village, doubling the transit time to Nablus. After 6 years of court cases and a ruling supportive of villager’s rights–but still no results–the Popular Committee of Kufr Qaddoum decided to press the issue with a series of weekly protests which began in July, 2011.
The protest began as usual, after the Friday morning prayers, with upbeat music and a crowd of children, teens, adults, and elders from the village waving flags, singing, chanting—along with journalists and at least 20 Israeli and international solidarity activists. As the marchers neared a barbed wire barricade, gas-masked and heavily armed soldiers were visible not only lined up further on the road, but in numerous flanking and sniping positions up the hillside, which is controlled by the Israeli Occupation Forces. As protestors marched closer, without any verbal warning, soldiers began firing tear gas canisters at high velocity towards protesters, which ricocheted off village walls and bounced into yards. Extremely hot, noxious, and dangerous, tear gas canisters typically cause eye pain, respiratory difficulty, and when aimed at people (such as Friday) severe impact injuries or death. Having been fired upon, Palestinian youth and adults took up stones and lit small fires to symbolically hold ground and drive back the soldiers. After numerous volleys back and forth and a Palestinian advance, a warning was made that if protesters continued forward, more soldiers would enter the village from behind, where most of the younger children and women typically remain throughout the protest (a tactic used in other villages like Nabi Saleh and Ni’lin).
After the protesters chose to hold their position the soldiers withdrew, leaving Palestinian youth and adults singing and dancing back to the village, under a bright sun and dissipating clouds of tear gas.
According to Murad, a Palestinian resident and activist of the village, this last demonstration was a definite though incomplete success—in part because of the size (about 350 in a town of 3500) and in part because they were able to continue forward as far as they did without giving up. Although protesters did not continue up the road, Murad did not regret the decision.
“We do not fear anything they do to us,” he said, “but they wanted to enter the village, and we want to keep our people safe.”
Yet asked whether the continued protests would open the road, Murad’s answer was, “we don’t feel anything [has changed].” According to Murad, the Israeli military has told villagers that it is “looking for other solutions.” “But we don’t need any other solutions,” he added, “other than the main road.”
Mahmoud Shaker Kadoumi, another participating resident of Kufr Qaddoum, also saw the protest as a success, but also spoke of its costs to the community.
In the last 6 months, [the demonstrations] have become a habit every Friday…and every Friday—tonight there will be arrests of young people. Two weeks ago, after the protest, at midnight the soldiers knocked on doors, entered houses and arrested two young people. [Soldiers} said they were “throwing stones.” They will be held 4, 6, maybe 8 months.
Although night raids and arrests against Palestinians believed to be activists and/or stone-throwers are common in the West Bank, the regularity of arrests in such a small community takes a certain toll.
But so also does the economic and social damage of an occupation, which like in other parts of Palestine, has led to a large emigration from the village—according to Murad emigrants of Kufr Qaddoum and their children amount to many times the current population of the village—a trend reflected in other villages and occupied Palestine as a whole. According to BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, 7.1 of 10.1 million Palestinians globally are refugees in 2010 (some internally displaced), and of those, 5.2 million live outside the boundaries of historic Palestine. While specifics of diaspora histories of the Nakba (1948 partition) and 1967 are contested—loss of land, work, accessible roads, and markets, together with military and political repression have driven wave after wave of emigration. While Kafr Qaddoum’s residents may not have ended the Occupation on Friday night or resolved their village’s economic concerns, they did take a little bit more of their road back for a few hours. The message of these protesters was clear: small victories are still victories and must be celebrated.
Aaron is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).
by Jack English
20 January 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
The ongoing repression of international activists took a turn for the ridiculous on Thursday night in Al Khalil, also known as Hebron. At approximately 7:30pm on January 19th, an activist approached a military checkpoint en route to his apartment, where two soldiers on duty, recognizing him as an activist and international observer in Al Khalil, demanded to search his person and bag. Upon finding two bags of bulk tea, which they insisted were drugs, and a fork-knife-spoon camping utensil, they called the police to make an arrest.
However, upon arrival at the scene, the officers confirmed the legality of possessing both tea and eating utensils. Yet upon further discussion with the soldiers, the activist was informed that he would still be detained and brought to the police station in the neighboring illegal settlement of Kiryat Arba for interrogations under the charge that the activist had “insulted a public servant.”
The specific alleged act was explained as, incredibly, “farting on a soldier.”
En route to the police station the accusing soldier sang songs demonstrating his excitement and belief that the international would be deported for this alleged flatulent offense. Of course, following a long wait and brief interrogation, the ludicrous charges were thrown out, and the activist was released.
While he was leaving, the soldier left him with the parting warning and threat “I will remember your face. I will be your worst nightmare”.
While the comic absurdity of this event calls into serious question the maturity of many of the heavily armed members of the Israeli occupation soldiers, and the professional integrity of the Israeli police officers who attempted to proceed with these charges, it is significantly less funny when viewed in the context of the occupation, and specifically the situation in Al Khalil, where 600 illegal settlers have taken over the city center, protected by 2,000 Israeli occupational soldiers, enforcing the ban of Palestinians from certain streets and the closure of 1,800 Palestinian shops in and around Shuhada Street.
This comes with the frequently raid of Palestinian homes, and subjection of Palestinians to humiliating searches, harassment, and detention while passing through the numerous military checkpoints in the city center. Meanwhile, illegal settlers are protected when they violently attack the remaining Palestinian residents of the area and attack their property, such as the burning of a Palestinian family’s car in the neighborhood of Tel Rumeideh last Saturday, while soldiers looked on.
Even the mere presence of the various international groups that serve to observe and document these abuses in Al Khalil is viewed with unveiled disgust by both settlers and the military. The settlers frequently respond to this presence by verbally, sexually, and physically attacking internationals while onlooking soldiers characteristically turn a blind eye.
The soldiers do their part with unwarranted, long, and frequent detentions of the internationals, recent attempted raids on both the apartments of the International Solidarity Movement and the Christian Peacemakers Team, and when possible, as is clearly illustrated by this most recent incident, arrests under even the most absurd pretenses.
It is important to note that while internationals at least have the “benefit” of being subject to Israeli civilian law enforcement and it’s civil constraints, Palestinians can be arrested by the soldiers themselves, face significantly longer detentions, are tried in Israeli Military Court, and finally, often face obscenely long prison sentences.
This is why it is so important to maintain an international presence here, and illustrates why this mere presence is viewed as such a threat. The work of both internationals and Palestinians of exposing the realities of this occupation to the international community is essential in fighting Zionism’s systematic erasure of Palestinian history, culture, and theft of their right to land and freedom.
Jack English is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).
by Nathan Stuckey
19 January 2012
Click here to view the embedded video.
Every Tuesday we gather next to the half destroyed Beit Hanoun Agricultural College. At eleven o’clock, we set out into the no go zone. This week there were about thirty of us, members of the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative, the International Solidarity Movement, and other activists from Gaza. At eleven o’clock the megaphone starts to play Bella Ciao and the flags are hoisted in the air, soon we start to march down the road into the no go zone. Today feels strange, something is different, there is only one body in the sky, the Israeli blimp that constantly hangs over Beit Hanoun watching our every move is missing, today only the sun is over us in the sky, the sun and some Israeli F16’s.
Entering the no go zone is always a strange experience. First, you always remember the danger, Israel claims the right to shoot anyone who enters the no go zone, every week, someone is shot for doing what we are doing. They are shot for going to their land, sometimes to gather cement to rebuild the houses shattered during the massacre the Israeli’s call Cast Lead, sometimes searching for metal to recycle and sell for a few shekels, sometimes shepherds with their sheep. The no go zone is like a dystopian future, the people who used to live there have all been expelled, they live as internal refugees in the prison that is Gaza. When you walk in the no go zone you are sometimes reminded that people used to live here, you find shredded irrigation pipes, wells, the foundations of houses, and today, for the first time, I saw an old quarry that used to provide rocks for building. The orchards and fields that used to cover the no go zone have been thoroughly erased, there is no more evidence that they even existed. In 1948 the Zionists plant forests to hide the ethnically cleansed Palestine villages, in Gaza, they do not bother, they just grind the evidence up under the treads of bulldozers. The orchards have already disappeared, there is no trace of them, most of the houses have disappeared, with time even the wells and the remaining foundations will slowly be ground to nothing. Only the quarry will remain. The land here is not like the rest of Gaza, walking is difficult, the bulldozers have left it completely scarred, jagged mini hills and ridges are everywhere.
Today, we walk deep into the no go zone. Deeper than we have ever gone before, to land no Palestinian has been on since 2000. Sometimes it feels like a nature walk, instead of watching out for tigers or lions we watch out for jeeps or tanks. We finally reach the barbed wire that lays about 20 meters in front of the wall, there is no way through it. A smaller balloon than the usual one begins to rise over the wall. Sabur Zaaneen from the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative speaks, “We would like to welcome all of the activists who have to come to Gaza with the Miles of Smiles Convoy, I hope that many more activists come to Palestine to work in the towns and refugee camps of Palestine where they can confront the state terrorism of Israel directly.” We climb a nearby hill and plant a flag. We spot a jeep; it drives up to the concrete tower embedded in the wall. The soldiers climb the stairs and begin to shoot at us. We begin to walk back to Beit Hanoun. The soldiers climb down from the tower, get in their jeep and drive to higher hill overlooking the no go zone. They get out, and aim their guns at us again. It does not matter that they are under no threat, that we are a completely nonviolent demonstration of civilians on their own land. In Gaza, the occupation is reduced to its most basic, the tracks of bulldozers and the crack of rifles. The bulldozers erase all evidence that anybody ever lived there, the rifles erase the people that live here. We will not be erased. The olive trees that we plant in the no go zone will feed the children of Gaza. The martyrs will live on in our hearts. The popular resistance will outlast the occupation.
