A demonstration in solidarity with Gaza Fishermen is planned for Wednesday, 5 December 2012, to be held at Gaza Port at 10am.
In the period between Wednesday, 28 November, and Saturday, 1 December, at least 29 fishermen have been arrested, at least 9 fishing boats have been impounded (including a larger trawling vessel), and one boat has been destroyed. The fishermen’s reports are generally the same: they are fishing within the new 6 mile limit (or even within the former 3 mile limit) when Israeli gunboats approach and start firing at them, often aiming at the motor. They order fishermen to strip down to their undergarments, jump into the water, and swim towards the gunboat, where they are handcuffed and blindfolded, and sometimes beaten. Some are taken to Ashdod or Erez and interrogated. Most are released the same day, although Amar Bakr is still being held at Ashdod. Most of the confiscated boats have belonged to the Bakr family, while the Hessi family has also been attacked.
An announcement was issued by the Hamas government stating that the maritime boundaries had been extended from three to six nautical miles under the terms of the recent ceasefire. International standards set the limit at 12 miles, while the Oslo Accords granted Gaza fishermen 20 miles in 1995. However, this limit was reduced to three miles in January 2009 after the attacks of Operation Cast Lead.
In late January 2009, when fishermen returned to the sea after Operation Cast Lead, they were viciously attacked. Boats were completely destroyed, and many fishermen were shot, with serious injuries. Some were even shot in the back as they attempted to return to the shore. Now, nearly four years later, immediately following a ceasefire, Gaza fishermen are once again under attack. The Israeli violations of the ceasefire agreement should not go unnoticed. Violations have occurred nearly every day since the agreement was brokered, with Israeli forces attacking fishermen at sea and farmers at work in the buffer zones. The question is now: who is holding Israel accountable?
More information can be found at the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR). www.pchrgaza.org.
Gaza portKhadr Bakr, a Gaza fisherman, in front of the Gaza portFirshermen Sabry Mahmoud Bakr and Jamal Bakr in front of the Gaza port
In 2008/2009 Gaza was bombed by Israeli Apache helicopters and F16 and V58 fighter planes for 22 days, ultimately causing the deaths of more than 1400 Palestinians, predominatly civlians. Israel, with all the impunity it has enjoyed since its establishment on the ruins of Palestinian society, returned to Gaza two weeks ago and repeated some of the same crimes in 8 days, launching 1800 aerial strikes, killing more than 175 Palestinians — including 34 children, 11 women, 19 elderly — and injuring 1399 people, including 465 children, 254 women, and 91 elderely, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
Israel’s academic institutions have played a key role in the planning, development, implementation and justification of this and many other Israeli war crimes against the Palestinian people. Tel Aviv University, for instance, takes pride in playing the central role in the development of the Israeli military doctrine of “disproportionate force” against Palestinian and Lebanese civilians.[1] Technion, Israel’s institute of technology, takes credit for developing many of the deadly weapon systems used against civilians in Gaza and elsewhere in the occupied Palestinian territory.[2] And the list goes on. This entrenched and fatal academic complicity in the commission of crimes against civilians has made PACBI and its partners around the world intensify their campaign for a comprehensive academic boycott of Israel in light of the latest massacre in Gaza.
Israel’s belligerent and entirely disproportionate air, land and sea bombardment of the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip always damages vital infrastructure and terrifies the civilian population and is therefore considered a form of collective punishment against the Palestinian people. Such war crimes are forbidden under international humanitarian law, especially the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prescribes the manner in which armies must treat civilians during times of conflict.
But Israel has been getting away with these war crimes and crimes against humanity. The “international community,” under U.S. hegemony, seems apathetic to the plight of the Palestinian people. In fact, from diplomatic support to intricate military, academic and economic relations, the US-European establishment has been deeply complicit in prolonging and strengthening Israel’s system of occupation, colonialism and apartheid, as well as in justifying and whitewashing it.
The U.S. president, followed by a chorus of European leaders, duly jumped to Israel’s defense, upholding its “right to defend itself,”[3] ignoring the fact that international law unequivocally stipulates that any injustice or unlawful act cannot give rise to a legal right or entitlement. Missing in such mantras is the right of the Palestinian people, the occupied, ethnically cleansed and oppressed, to self-determination and to defend itself against foreign occupation, a right that is granted by international law, within specific parameters. The British FM William Hague performed skillful acrobatics to spin the blame from the aggressor to the victim of aggression, claiming that “Hamas bears the greatest responsibility for the current crisis, as well as the ability to bring it most swiftly to an end!”[4]
It is crucial to contextualize Israel’s latest war of aggression as part of an ongoing strategy of depriving Palestinians, especially in Gaza, of means of sustenance in order to “sear into their conscience” Israel’s upper hand and the futility of resistance. The hermetic siege imposed on Gaza for more than 5 years, epitomized by Israel’s use of a ‘calorie count’ to limit the flow of food into Gaza, is the most deadly dimension of this patently criminal strategy [5].
This strategy, characterized by a former editor of Haaretz, a leading Israeli daily, as one of “expulsion” as well as “territorial seizure and apartheid”[6] has shaped Israel’s policy for a long time. As far back as 1992, the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin wished Gaza “would just sink into the sea” [7]. The overwhelming majority of Gaza is made up of refugees ethnically cleansed by Zionist militias and later the state of Israel during the 1948 Nakba. The fact that Gazans are not born to Jewish mothers – the criterion used by Israel to determine who is Jewish — is enough reason to deprive them of their UN-stipulated right to return to their homes and lands from which they were uprooted and exiled. The deeply colonial and racist Israeli logic views Palestinians, like the Afrikaner establishment viewed the Black natives of South Africa, as an inferior, hostile group of people that must be isolated in Bantustans, in accordance with the Oslo Accords’ terms, without calling them so; and if they show any resistance to this plan, they must get punished severely by transforming these Bantustans into “open-air prisons” or walled ghettos.
As a result of Israel’s blockade on most imports and exports and its other policies designed to punish Gazans, about 40% of Gaza’s workforce is now unemployed or without pay, and about 60% of its residents live in grinding poverty, according to various United Nations agencies’ reports. About 1.2 million of them are now dependent for their day-to-day survival on food handouts from U.N. or international agencies; an increasing number of Palestinian families in Gaza are unable to offer their children more than one meager meal a day, often little more than rice and boiled lentils. Fresh fruit and vegetables are beyond the reach of many families. Meat and chicken are impossibly expensive. And fish is unavailable in its markets because the Israeli navy has curtailed the movements of Gaza’s fishermen.
The UN, EU and the “international community,” by and large, have remained silent in the face of atrocities committed by Israel. Hundreds of dead Palestinians have failed to convince them to act. We are, therefore, left with one option; an option that does not wait for the United Nations Security Council, namely: people’s power. This remains the only power capable of counteracting the massive imbalance between the oppressed Palestinians and their Israeli oppressors.
The horror of the racist apartheid regime in South Africa was challenged with a sustained campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions initiated in 1958 and given new urgency in the wake of the 1976 Soweto Uprising. This campaign led ultimately to the collapse of white rule in 1994 and the establishment of a multi-racial, democratic state.
Similarly, the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) has been gathering momentum since 2005. Gaza 2012, like Soweto 1976, cannot be ignored: it demands a response from all who believe in a common humanity. Now is the time to boycott the apartheid Israeli state, to divest and to impose sanctions against it. A crucial dimension of BDS that is more urgent than ever is an academic boycott of Israel’s universities, which have once again been shown to be full partners in crime.
2nd December 2012 | Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) repeats its condemnation of Israel’s violations against Palestinian fishermen in the Gaza Strip. PCHR is concerned over the escalation of Israeli attacks directed against fishermen since the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip that was stopped following the cease-fire agreement reached between Palestinian resistance groups and the Israeli occupation forces, under Egyptian and international auspices. Attacks against fishermen escalated despite the Israeli authorities’ announcement of allowing the fishermen to fish up to 6 nautical miles off the Gaza shore in the context of the cease-fire.[1] Since the cease-fire agreement came about, Israeli occupation forces have arrested 29 fishermen, including 14 who were arrested on Saturday, 01 December 2012. Additionally, 9 fishing boats were confiscated and damaged, including 3 boats that were confiscated on Saturday.
On Saturday morning, 01 December 2012, the Israeli naval forces opened fire at Palestinian fishermen and boats in Gaza’s waters while they were fishing about 3 nautical miles off the Gaza shore. As a result, an engine of a fishing boat was damaged. The Israeli naval forces chased 3 boats and arrested 14 fishermen who were on board of the boats.
In his testimony to a PCHR fieldworker, one of the fishermen, Ramez Izzat Baker, 41, from Gaza City, said:
“At 06:30 on Saturday, 01 December 2012, I went fishing with my brother Rami, 34, and 3 of my cousins: Bayan Khamis Baker, 17; Mohammed Khaled Baker, 17; and Omar Mohammed Baker, 22, off the Gaza shore. We started fishing about 3 nautical miles off the shore. At 10:00, an Israeli gunboat approached and chased us ordering us to stop. The Israeli forces started firing heavily at us. Therefore, we stopped fishing for fear of being harmed or our boats getting damaged. They ordered us to take our clothes off, jump into the water and swim towards the gunboat. We did what they ordered us to do. The Israeli forces arrested us (my brother, three cousins and me) and transported us to Ashdod seaport, where we were questioned. At 21:00, we were released, while our boats remained in custody.”
In another incident, an Israeli gunboat attacked 2 fishing boats belonging to Sabri Mohammed Baker, 52, and Eid Mohsen Baker, 23, who are both fishermen and live in Gaza City. The 2 men were fishing approximately 2 nautical miles[2] off the shore when Israeli naval forces opened fire at the boats, damaging the boat that belongs to Eid Baker. The Israeli naval forces ordered the 9 fishermen who were on board of the 2 boats to stop fishing and then arrested them. They took them to Ashdod seaport and interrogated them. The naval forces kept the two boats. At approximately 21:00, 8 fishermen were released while Emad Mohammed Baker, 33, from Gaza remained in custody.
In light of the above, PCHR:
1. Condemns the continued Israeli violations against Palestinian fishermen in the Gaza sea, and calls upon Israel to immediately stop its policy of chasing and arresting Palestinian fishermen, and to allow them to sail and fish freely;
2. Believes that the violations committed against the Palestinian fishermen within the 6 nautical miles limit proves false the Israeli claims of permitting the fishermen to fish freely up to 6 nautical miles from the shore;
3. Calls upon the international community, including the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 on the protection of civilians in times of war, to intervene to immediately stop the Israeli violations against the Palestinian fishermen, and to allow them to sail and fish freely in the Gaza sea.
by Wyatt Black 1 December 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
On the morning of November 28th, numerous soldiers came to the village of Susiya in the South Hebron Hills, unannounced from the nearby settlement, which is also called Susiya. The army jeeps and construction equipment came rolling in around eight o’clock and quickly went to work without giving any information as to why they were invading someone’s private land, and proceeded to demolish a tent in the village.
Esha Ishboal erected a tent two years ago so that his workers could have some shade while picking olives on one of his families’ properties in Susiya, which is south of the city of Al Khalil (Hebron). It was a simple structure, not dirty or old. It had a metal frame and was almost always open on all sides but one, just enough to block some wind. Here Esha would invite his friends to have tea, or as in my case he’d ask a stranger if they would like some hospitality. That was the situation on his farm a couple weeks ago at least.
The table and chairs were spared but the tent itself was leveled. This was an especially lazy demolition since it wouldn’t have taken a bulldozer to bring the tent to the ground. A couple of soldiers could have done it in less than half an hour.
Esha Ishboal looks at the remains of his tent after the demolition
Wyatt Black is a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed)
30 November 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank, Occupied Palestine
Many injured as Israeli Forces fire rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas canisters directly into a crowd from close range during a peaceful attempt to remove an illegal road block.
On approaching the turn of the road in close vicinity to the settlement that is currently blocked the demonstration was halted and crushed by twenty or so Israeli soldiers simultaneously firing rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas canisters directly into the crowd. A number of protesters required medical attention following the tear gas attack, including a young child who was unconscious for a short time and another protester who had to be rushed to hospital after the tear gas triggered a serious asthma attack. Two international human rights activists were hit by rubber-coated steel bullets, and one activist’s arm will be incapacitated for some time.
Only hours after the successful Palestinian UN non-member state bid, today’s action started well spirited, with large groups of people in the centre of the village listening to speeches, enjoying music, and breaking into chants. By the time the protest was ready to leave, similar to previous actions to unblock the road, more than 200 people from Qaryut had gathered. The speakers briefed the crowd that the protest would be a strictly non-violent action and set off towards the road carrying olive branches, placards bearing slogans, and tools for dismantling the road block.
The village of Qaryut, located in Area C in the West Bank is being squeezed out by the Israeli settlements of Shilo and Eli. As a result, Palestinian farm land has and continues to be confiscated, access is restricted, property damaged, and members of the community are regularly harassed violently. Since the first Intifada, the village’s once-main road towards Highway 60 has been blocked, heavily infringing on the daily lives of commuting workers and students attending schools and universities in either of those cities. Blocking off the direct access to Route 60 means that travel times have been increased by at least 30 minutes going to or from Ramallah or Nablus. Continue reading New state, same occupation: violence in Qaryut as villagers attempt to remove illegal roadblock
West Bank, Occupied Palestine